


no turning back

by heixicanadragon



Series: District 7 'Verse [2]
Category: How to Train Your Dragon (2010), Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Ableist Language, Aftermath of Violence, Amputation, Body Dysphoria, Consent Issues, Death, Depression, Dissociation, Dystopia, Exhibitionism, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, Female Character of Color, Fire, Fondling, Gender Dysphoria, Kissing, Light Bondage, Masturbation, Minor Violence, Nudity, Oral Sex, Other, POV Character of Color, Past Sexual Abuse, Past Violence, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Scars, Suicidal Thoughts, Trauma, Vaginal Fingering, all your faves are brown, nonbinary character of color, racelifting, skin bleaching effects, slight d/s connotations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-19
Updated: 2014-06-19
Packaged: 2018-02-03 21:35:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 24,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1757585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heixicanadragon/pseuds/heixicanadragon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Astrid and Hiccup have decided to risk what little chance of staying alive this Quarter Quell they had by beginning a relationship after six years of friendship chock full of ambivalence and UST, including the last two years of increasing uneasiness and conflict. It seemed worth doing at the start, but beginning to confront the reality of their respective histories proves more complicated than either of them bargained for. It was just going to be a lazy afternoon in bed, after all. Follows directly after the events of "<a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/1451293>">this time for sure</a>" in the District 7 'Verse series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> General content warnings in tags. Chapter-specific content warnings to follow at the beginning of each chapter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ptsd flashback - violence/trauma/falling/fire, disordered sleeping, disordered eating

Hiccup couldn’t remember falling asleep but they were obviously either in a dream or had just woken up from one. It was disconcerting. It still didn’t seem real.

  


They had woken up in Astrid’s arms — _in her arms_ still _, my god, I’m actually here, finally, wow—_ with their head tucked under her chin, her heart beating steadily beneath them like the ponderous turn of a waterwheel, the pulse of her throat a slow nudge against their forehead. They couldn’t move, and at first Hiccup thought that was because their bones had melted away, which seemed to be partially accurate. Everything in them had turned to mush. They shifted a little, letting their head settle down between the notch of her collarbones. 

  


Her arms were wrapped tight around them though, so it was a little difficult to readjust, considering how strong she was and how firmly she was holding them. She was still sleeping. Her breath was slow and regular, but her leg, the one that had scars coursing down to her knee—the scars of which they could feel as hard ridges of flesh through both layers of clothes between them—started twitching in spasms, making their prosthetic shin bounce, impact jouncing through the socket to their stump. It hurt, sending little sparks of stabbing red through their vision, making what was left of their shin feel hollow. That must have been what had awoken them just now. They hissed in pain, tried to adjust their leg away.

  


Her twitch subsided, but she squeezed them even tighter, her hands digging into them like claws.

  


A low moan, which Hiccup felt reverberate through her chest into theirs, sent chills. And not the good kind. Well, mostly not. And then Astrid was clenching the loose skin of their shoulders between her fingers, her torso shaking and stiff under them, and the chills centered down into a terrifyingly familiar freeze of their gut, the feeling of icy water jangling through their intestines. They shuddered, tried to get out, get away, but she was too strong. She grabbed them somehow even harder in a sharp intake of breath. They were trapped. They couldn’t get out and she was holding them like they were falling, like both of them were falling together, spattered in dragon’s blood, speeding down into gray smoke and heat and Hiccup could taste blood, could taste salt, could taste a scream ripping through their throat—

  


They found themself flipping over through the air and landing hard onto the floor, sprawling, their leg aching and throbbing and they couldn’t seem to get breath back into their chest, no matter how hard they tried. They made themself get up on their hands, on their spasming knee, in case. In case of what, they weren’t sure. In order to run. To fight their way back to Astrid. To make a dash for escape. 

  


But Astrid was finally awake. She was staring up, _whimpering_ , lying on her back panting shallow and quick, and Hiccup through the haze of black fog that was receding from sight saw her knuckles slowly let go of the couch cushion at her sides. A slap of relief and anger smacked into them, crowding the terror away. They crawled back carefully, wincing, letting the gusts of pain echo from their knee through their mouth and bleed away into the air. Astrid was trying to sit up. Trying being the operative descriptor.

  


They pushed themself half up and onto the couch and coaxed her back down, leaning their torso across hers as they prodded her shoulders back. It shouldn’t have been that easy to do, even with her half-heartedly resisting against them. Her pupils were dilating in and out and Hiccup was unable to stop themself from remembering how she’d looked before, half-orgasmic and blissed out because of _them,_ because they’d made her almost come without really trying—and how fucking wrong was it that seeing her like this made them think of sex? Trembling with fear while obviously coming down from a flashback was not supposed to be hot. Dammit. It was so wrong. _I’m disgusting, I’m fucking gross. I’m sorry._ They sat back onto their heels, reaching out to brush a hand over her forehead, trying to hide a grimace at the cold sweat that was slicking her bangs. 

  


She finally, with obvious effort, forced her eyes to meet theirs. She worked her mouth like she trying to remember how to move her lips. “I… was falling. But it wasn’t real.” She closed her eyes. “You were there. I… heard you scream.”

  


The distant tone of unbelief that shivered through her tainted the relief Hiccup felt at hearing her coherent, at seeing her awake again. “I—I think I did scream. You’re really strong. You got me and it—uh, I was remembering… stuff, too, which is why I screamed. Probably.” Hiccup didn’t know what they were saying, if they were saying the right words, only knowing with fucking clarity that if the wrong words came out, Astrid would feel even worse. They couldn’t have that. Their heart already felt like it had been ripped out and thrown to the ground, like it was being gutted at market.

  


“So I scared you. Sorry.” She was blinking back tears. “Sorry, sorry—“

  


“Shhhhh, Astrid, no no no, shhhh, it’s ok, you were just dreaming—“

  


“But you fell—I think I pushed you off—are you ok? Did I hurt you?”

  


“I’m ok. Just, wasn’t expecting it.” They picked up one of her hands from the sofa, prying it loose from the cushion, and held it between their own two, her hand so much broader and heavier, scars running from palm up, right now nerveless in their grip. They couldn’t stop themself; they bowed their head over it, pressing their lips hard to her hand, in not quite a kiss. 

  


They were so angry. So angry, so fucking furious that she was so obviously broken, scarred, so frightened, so frightening. And all because of the Capitol, the Games. It was horrific to see her like this. _I had no idea. I had no idea how bad it was. Fuck._

  


They lifted their face up, staring at her blanched complexion, continuing to cradle her hand in theirs. “Astrid, ah… um, do you always have nightmares like this?” They knew that they couldn’t keep the tremble of rage out. 

  


She sighed. Met their gaze, then looked away towards the back of the couch.

  


_Astrid._ “So, every night, then.” Hiccup wanted desperately to cry. Or to light something on fire. 

  


“It’s been worse recently,” she admitted. “But if I don’t sleep, I don’t dream. So I don’t always sleep.” Astrid’s voice was quickly leveling out. “I… I didn’t let myself sleep last night because I knew it’d be worse. Because I’d be dreaming about you. And then now I fell asleep by accident while holding you, and I almost hurt you.” She took back her hand from them. “I did hurt you.”

  


Hiccup firmly snatched her hand back, cursing the trembling they felt in her, in both of them. “Nuh-uh, no, you’re not going there. I made my decision. You asked me and I said yes. Well, and then I accidentally declared my love for you and made a complete fool out of myself, so. Y’know. I’m kinda stuck with you. You’re not allowed to back out for no reason.” The joking tone they had taken was falling flat, ringing in their ears like the blather it was.

  


Astrid heaved herself up to sit, letting her legs fall to the floor, then leaned over her knees, letting the crown of her head knock against Hiccup’s forehead, pressing into them, gripping Hiccup’s hand. The flop of her weight vibrated painfully, like a drill against their bones. They forced themself to stay still, to hold her hand. 

  


“Hiccup, can we really do this?” Her voice was ragged and small. “I don’t want to hurt you. But I can’t prom—…I don’t work anymore.”

  


Hiccup had never felt at such a loss. There were so many things wrong with that statement. Astrid was wrong. She was wrong about this, about herself. It was so blatantly untrue.

  


“You’re wrong. You—you work surprisingly well, under the circumstances.”

  


She sniffled at that, shifted her head so that she could fall forward a little, lean to the side against their neck, the tendrils of hair around her face trailing against their skin. Hiccup clenched their eyes closed. They had to say this. They had to say it in a way that she’d accept. They weren’t going to lose her. They couldn’t. She had started this but, by God, Hiccup had make sure it kept on going. She needed to be able to keep it together until the Games, until they could somehow get out of here. Hiccup needed to make the Capitol pay for what they’d done, to her, and to them. Not even a nap on the couch was safe from the horrors that haunted them.

  


“Astrid. Just. Let’s try it. At least once. We can spend the day together. We’ll make sure you get some rest, and if you’re having a bad time, I’ll wake you up. You’re… you’re not doing so good partially because you’ve not been sleeping. But I can help you.” _You’re not alone anymore. I won’t abandon you. Not ever again._

  


Astrid leaned further forward, further over, into their shoulder, until she was practically hanging off the couch against them. “Sleep without nightmares sounds fucking amazing.” Her mouth was so soft against their skin, the weight of her like a promise.

  


“Yeah, that’s… that’s maybe something I could help with. We could, we could, y’know, experiment, figure out what helps.” They were bordering on skeezy and they had no idea if now was a good time. They knew that, but they said it anyway.

  


She smiled, and Hiccup could feel her lips stretch against their neck. _Oh. Please. Say yes._ They snaked their free hand up around her back, stroking along her spine. _I want you. I want you to say yes._

  


“Ok, take me to bed, then.” She snorted a little, the burst of air hitting Hiccup’s skin, making them jump. “And you’re free to interpret that in whatever way you want. You still owe me.” She squeezed their hand. “Help me up. Legs are woozy.”

  


Hiccup braced themself, tried to rise, but they were trembling despite themself. “Uh, you—you’re kinda too heavy for me—can you—?”

  


Astrid sat back onto the couch, letting herself fall away from them except for their linked hands. She really looked exhausted. She must have been running on pure adrenaline this morning, and it’d all drained out. Hiccup got up to their feet, their leg hurting even more than it would have usually. _Ugh, really need to just take the prosthetic off for a few hours and re-bandage. Guess we’ll be crossing that bridge today too._ They huffed. This wasn’t at all like one of the hundreds of fantasies they’d had about anything involving Astrid. It was… way more complicated. It hurt way more. It seemed like every turn Hiccup was embarrassing themself, or was about to. And Astrid. Astrid wasn’t invulnerable, untouchable, or girded with steel like that they’d thought. She was so… something soft. Finite. Precious.

  


They’d known that she was probably the kindest person they knew, but the most fragile?

  


Astrid had closed her eyes, looking like she might drift off. _At least get her_ in _a bed, for now. Figure out what_ going _to bed would mean later._

  


They pulled her up, thankful that she was present enough to help push herself up. Thankful, so thankful, that she was able to shuffle along with them as both of them clutched hands walking towards her bedroom. They stopped at the door, letting go of her hand as she walked past them and sat heavily on the foot of the mattress. Her fingers fiddled with the few buttons of her jumpsuit that Hiccup hadn’t gotten to earlier. 

  


They gulped. The fresh memory of her straddling them, of her gasping breathlessly into their mouth, of her hair trailing over them in a tickling curtain, of the scent that had risen from her trembling body as they’d pressed against it with mouth and hand and prick, suddenly reminded them of the utter improbability that Astrid had, for whatever reason, begun to find Hiccup irresistible, and not only that, couldn’t get enough of them. They could _affect_ her so wildly. It all came rushing back, making their head swim. And there she was, undressing like they weren’t there.

  


Or like they were there, and she knew it, and she wanted them to be there, with her, while she undressed. 

  


Unreal.

  


They couldn’t seem to make themself walk in through the door. Not when so much beauty was being unveiled so casually or deliberately.

  


Astrid shrugged off the top of her jumpsuit, letting it fall around her hips, and looked up, catching Hiccup’s eye despite the desperate amount of cleavage spilling away from her bra and the way her belly folded invitingly. They knew a little of how soft she could be to the touch but they’d never actually seen her. It was amazing to see her. And she was watching them, letting them see her. 

  


“Something wrong?” 

  


They gulped again. “Uh. No. Just. Um. Wow. No, nothing’s wrong. Not at all.”

  


“Can you come in, then?”

  


“I. Uh. Ok. Yes,” they sputtered as they made themself stagger towards her. They hesitated as they approached closer. They didn’t know whether to concentrate on her face or just let their eyes roam, but both options seemed dangerously overwhelming.  

  


“Can you help me?” She was grimacing as her hands fumbled behind her back. “I can’t—I don’t want to get up again.”

  


“What do you need?”  

  


“Just a sleep shirt. In the top drawer.” Astrid with a grunt finally undid her bra and tossed it away to the side, and Hiccup thought that if they’d not already felt dizzy they’d have fainted from the shock. As it was, they barely could turn away from the sight of her fullness, her dark areolas sloping down in gibbous-moon smudges over her nipples. _Sleep shirt, fifty orgasms, whatever you want, I’ll give it._ They ruffled through the drawer’s contents, grabbing a couple things before returning in a heady rush.

  


“Your choice.” They held the two basically identical shifts out to her, one in each hand, blue and green, and decided to just go for it, allowing their eyes to dance over her, savor her, something in their stomach twisting tight. _I could get used to this. Maybe. In like a thousand millennia._

  


“This one,” Astrid said, smiling as she took the green one out of Hiccup’s hands, “and you can wear the other.”

  


“Oh, so it’s gonna be kinda like a sleepover,” Hiccup quipped, “we’ll share a bed and I’ll borrow pajamas and we’ll stay up all night trying not to be too loud so that we don’t get in trouble.”

  


Astrid raised an eyebrow at that before pulling the shirt over her head. “One, it’s barely afternoon—even if it doesn’t feel like it. And I don’t have any snacks for us. Never really had a sleepover without snacks.” She popped her arms through the short sleeves and smoothed the fabric down over her torso, her glorious breasts and belly now only just hidden through the thin fabric, then began wriggling out of the pants, pulling them off from underneath her hips.

  


Hiccup decided then and there to throw the shirt in their hands onto their head and start pulling it over, before Astrid could see how absolutely stupid their face had to look right now. No matter that they probably looked even more stupid shrugging on a shirt over a dress and then working the dress off from underneath like they really were at a sleepover with some random friend, and not about to go to bed with the person that they’d known for years after almost dying together, the same person with whom they had only a couple hours before been fooling around and then accidentally declared love for in the resulting endorphins flood. Letting Astrid see how fucking unable Hiccup was to deal with this situation would be humiliating to the extreme. The fact of her changing out of her clothes—and not in a striptease or even vaguely intentionally sexy way, but in a dead-tired fumble—being a nerve-wracking occasion was embarrassing in and of itself.

  


Thinking of why she was this exhausted, tired to the bone, made things even worse. This was a woman who normally was strong enough to chop down, strip, and dress several entire trees in a day singlehandedly, but who right now was barely feeling up to walking or standing because she’d not slept—not enough, and not without horrific dreams—because she was physically beginning to fall apart—and, goddammit, it was still the absolute worst time to find out this, to know that she’d been enduring this, maybe for months, if not actual years—and she was struggling to stay on balance because of _them._ Because of _Hiccup._  

  


She had chosen to admit that. To admit that her dreams were about death, about them dying with her.

  


Which was just. Fuck. Everything about that was just… too much, too much to take in the full impact of what it all meant. It was better not to think of all the things they might mean to her, and how many of those things were things that they should have never meant for her. Knowing that they were a source of Astrid’s obvious weakness was too horrible to be flattering. The scars that still swept down a full third of her body were proof of that.

  


But now they had to see if they could help her sleep, and sleep enough to begin recovering strength and clarity. Maybe they could even make it so that she could survive these Games.

 

Maybe they could start making up for the countless screw ups they’d caused, or been, in Astrid’s life. 

  


_Still can’t believe that she’d even let me into her bedroom, much less her bed. Or pajamas._

  


Hiccup finished kicking off their tights from the one flesh foot, not caring that they’d probably put a couple holes in the stretch fabric with their prosthetic toes. They looked up to see Astrid already pulling herself towards the head of the bed, where a lone pillow lay. She flopped her head down and groaned, a sound that hung in between pain and pleasure in Hiccup’s calculations, and which only set their organs to a higher frequency of tremble. 

  


They slowly backed and sat on the edge of the bed. _Ok. Yeah, I’m nervous. Nervous that I’m either going to make a fool of myself—even more so than I have been—or I’m not going to be enough to help. Or both._ The crush of Astrid’s arms closing around their body still ached in their ribs, along with the terrifying strength of her nails digging through their skin to find the tender spaces between their bones.

  


_I’m not enough for her. Not strong enough. Not good enough. And only just clever enough to get both of us in trouble. Just arrogant enough to think that I could do this._

  


They heaved their rubber leg up onto their other knee. _And of course, this dumb leg. That_ I _lost. My fault. I’m the reason why Astrid is this broken too. Because I thought I was… clever, or worse, that I was special. That I could tame Toothless._ Thinking that had been a mistake. A goddamned mistake. Their eyes burned as they broke the suction between the socket and their leg, carefully let the prothesis drop the short distance to the floor, then stripped the sleeve off their nub. There was some swelling, a bit of bruising along the kneecap and down the remaining shin bone, probably from falling after Astrid’s punch yesterday and kneeling on hard floors so damn much today. _Wasn’t even for something fun like a blowjob, either._ They let themself smirk. _Not yet, anyway._

  


They massaged along the bone, feeling for any pockets of inflammation deeper under the skin, then felt along the underside and finally the end knob of their leg. It all ached. They’d remembered too much and done too much. Everything was feeling the effects like after a full day out running errands or something, but it probably wasn’t even more than a couple hours after noon, judging by the way the light was slanting through the window shades and the hollowness of their stomach. They’d not had a chance to eat before any of this earth-shattering relationship-defining stuff had happened today, and as much as they tended to just not pay attention to food or schedules, today had been a lot for going on an empty stomach. Draining.

  


_Astrid. Astrid seems really tired too, though._ They looked over their shoulder sharply. _Is she eating ok recently? When was her last meal?_ She was lying on her side, arms curled up to her chest, her eyes hooded sleepily but still awake, watching. Hiccup didn’t remember seeing such dark smudges along her eye sockets before.

  


“Everything all right over there?” Her voice was quiet.

  


“Yeah.” They ran one more pass over their leg and slapped the remainder of their calf before turning to crawl towards her. The grin that crossed her face as she watched them come nearer about made them trip over their own hands—things like how she smiled were the reason that Astrid was so dangerous, so unsettling to be around, more than anything else that was objectively intimidating. Hiccup couldn’t trust themself around her, not enough to stay in control. 

  


The other things were scary, yeah, and there was no telling how much about Astrid was just not _right_ , had never been right since being Reaped, or even before that—life in Panem tended to fuck you up no matter what, Hiccup had found—but when she smiled at them, like she did now as they settled themself on their side to face her while feeling completely naked and wonderfully fragile in the over-sized borrowed sleep shirt, they couldn’t stop shaking in a perverse mix of gleeful trepidation. There was no greater sense of thrilling peril than when looking into the shining visage of the goddess who has invited you to bed her.

  


Especially if that goddess might drag you to hell. 

  


Looking into her calm, expectant deep brown eyes, all the confidence that they’d had earlier to kiss her senseless seemed to be a joke, something that they’d bring out for fun as a shield, as a misdirection, as a show. It was one thing to play at being suave or assertive in the excitement of the moment, wearing their own dress, with endorphins drumming through their body. It was quite another thing to be in Astrid’s bed and clothes by her request, in an attempt to be whatever she needed right now. To be enough for her. To keep from hurting her again, from fucking this up any further than they’d already had.

  


A breast shifted in a small fall beneath her shirt as Astrid reached across the small space between them. She hesitated before smoothing a thumb over Hiccup’s eyebrow, then leaned in a little.

  


“Thank you. I know this is sudden.” She sighed. “And I’m sorry that we probably only have a short time before…” She bit her lip and let her fingers drift over their brows, sending ripples of warmth overlapping with intersecting waves of cold through them with each caress of their forehead. A shuddering sigh escaped them as the nerves jangled in their stomach and migrated lower to their pelvis.

  


They forced themself to respond in words instead of a whine. “I want to. I… I’m all in.” Meeting her eyes again, “You’re going to make it out of these Games. I’ll make sure of it.”

  


Her hand stilled, resting in their hair. “You’re so certain.”

  


“Yes.”

  


She closed her eyes a beat before responding. “I’d rather you worry about yourself. Let me protect you for as long as possible.”

  


“Well, if I’m worrying about you, and you about me, we’re definitely going to make it. So, n-no problem.” 

  


“I hope you’re right.” A look of bleak determination hardened her lips, narrowed her eyes, peaked her brows. She let the hand in their hair slip to their neck, then took Hiccup by the shoulders and dragged them closer, gathering them in. 

  


Even if they lived for another hundred years, they’d never get used to the thrill of Astrid tugging their mouth to hers like she owned them. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> slight emetophobia warning, ptsd dissociation episode, discussion of past sexual assault, rape apologism from rape survivor, pregnancy mention, birth control/protection mention, mild self-harm, disordered eating, disordered sleeping, death mention

Astrid felt like she was moving in slow motion. Her body was heavy, and tired, and so, so weak, because she’d not been sleeping enough, because her emotions had been stretched from here to the moon and back over the past day—or ever since the past Reaping, to be precise—and because she couldn’t really remember the last time she’d eaten or wanted to eat—

 

—but Hiccup was kissing her, and they were working their hands up her back under her shirt and leaving a trail of smoldering ash over her skin as she leaned into their mouth, pressing her lips and tongue against theirs over and over because it was never enough, one kiss could never be enough, and she was trying to balance holding their body against her as tightly as she could without hurting them. They were making such precious groans and whimpers, sounds that she wanted to treasure, to wrap in linen packages like the rare spices that her father had collected in the kitchen cupboard, to be opened and savored only on special occasions.

 

This limited time with Hiccup was all she’d have. It was too late to be tired or exhausted, even if her body felt like one entire groaning yawn for sleep. Sleep wasn’t safe or restful anyway.

 

But Hiccup was so delightfully good at this stuff, so sleep could wait as long as they were willing to draw this out. Their hands slipped and swooped at the border between their bellies as she pressed Hiccup’s body to hers, both of their shirts lifting up and exposing stomach with each jerk and shift of their hips. Each touch of soft skin of Hiccup’s belly against hers was like a shock of an axe vibrating down the entire length of a tree, cutting something loose inside, building tension in the remaining strands of fiber with every movement they made against her. The hardness of their erection through their underwear pressed hot and welcome against her lower belly. _Fuck, you’re so… you’re just so good…_ She decided to say so, in between kisses, as she tightened her grip on them, and the words came out in breathy pants.

 

“You— I can’t—“ Hiccup sputtered in protest, in agreement. “Here— let me—“ They threw their head back a little, keeping their mouth out of reach enough to say in small gusts, “Astrid. Let me. Touch you. I need to.”

 

The sight of the scars that traversed her right side loomed before her eyes for a moment before she grunted affirmatively. She loosened her hold to let them have enough room to let their hands roam further but grabbed their head back closer, running her tongue over their upper lip before nipping it, reveling in how they breathed harder, more erratically, against her chin. She’d not had a datefriend in several years but it wasn’t hard to get back into the swing of things, even as tired and fuzzy as she was, and learning a trick or two from Hiccup and turning it right back onto them gratified in more ways than one.

 

But nothing she could do to their mouth could really compare with the sudden new sensation of their hands on her stomach, running lightly over her ribcage and slowly sweeping under her breasts and catching onto her nipples. She shuddered, tried to catch her breath, couldn’t help but gasp and moan at the sharp tweaks of pleasure. Her whole body already thrummed with delight and impatience but this was something heightened and “God, just don’t. Don’t stop,” sent Hiccup ducking down and diving up to start adding lips and tongue under her shirt as well. 

 

The way they could always add new sensation when Astrid thought there was nothing more to be done to her was something really annoying. She was beginning to sense through the glowing orange haze of half-satisfied need that she needed a thousand more years of life to fully enjoy this, that whatever fumbling embraces she’d had as a teen had been mere child’s play in comparison. And the way that Hiccup was going at her breasts—god, it was amazing—but she couldn’t see them, couldn’t watch them work their tongue over her nipples, and they weren’t really able to fit that well with both of them inside the tent of fabric—

 

Astrid finally pushed them down and out of the shirt by the crown of their head, ignoring their whimpering protests. She pulled the shirt off over her head, flopping onto her back with the effort. Damn shirt had only been in the way. She rolled back toward them, but they contrarily started attacking her neck and shoulders instead, peppering her with sloppy kisses.

 

“I love— your— this—amazing—” Their voice was as ragged as her breath felt. Hiccup stroked along the side of her right breast, what felt like ghosting over the scars becoming firm and delightful over untouched skin and then a spike of fire between her hips as they rubbed her nipple again, and began sucking on the underside of her jaw. This was too unfair. She was beginning to feel helpless from how much she was feeling, like she didn’t know where to put her hands or how to move against them, or where to put her mouth.

 

Astrid sighed, in frustration and want. _We need to regroup._ She reluctantly removed the hands from her breasts, catching both of Hiccup’s wrists together in a hold and nudging their mouth away from the crook of her neck with the other hand. Hiccup jerked, a panicked expression on their face, then relaxed upon looking down at the way she was holding their hands together. They clasped their hands under hers and sheepishly grinned up at her through their eyelashes.

 

Astrid suddenly felt…proud, or maybe it was possessive. They were hers, and they were going to be good, and pay attention, and listen.

 

“What are we doing, Hiccup?” 

 

They looked off to the side, well, up to the ceiling, in a quick dart. “Uh, it’s pretty obvious… I mean. Sex. Right?”

 

“No, I mean, what should we do? Like, specifics.” She let go of their wrists.

 

“Oh, you mean, like how we should get off?” Something was clouding their expression. They stared down at her breasts.

 

“Yeah, well, that’s part of it. But is there stuff you don’t like? Something you want to do, want me to do for you? Things like that.”

 

There was a long moment of stillness before Hiccup bit their lip and closed their eyes like they were in pain, tucked their chin down against their neck. Astrid was stunned to see a tear slide down their nose, slipping off the curve to land on their opposite cheek. Their eyelids fluttered frantically for a few seconds. They coughed a little, then rushed, thick in their throat, “Whatever you want. Whatever you want, I’ll do it.”

 

She was missing something. “Hey, hon—” She patted their shoulder but they froze even further underneath her hand, staring down into the bed sheet. _Oh. Um. What… what’s…_ “Hiccup, what’s going on?” She brought both her hands away, momentarily brushing a little finger on the round heel of their hand lying palm up and shaking, the hand that wasn’t clutching into a fist into the mattress.

 

Astrid made herself watch and wait as Hiccup struggled to contain themself, or to bring themself back—she couldn’t tell if they were about to explode or were leaving their body empty in front of her. Her mind raced through possibilities of what they could be reacting to, but she didn’t want to settle on anything. Every possibility seemed awful. Every one of them would be because of some horrible or careless person that had done something to Hiccup before, at some point when she’d not been in the Capitol, or at a party she’d refused to go to, or… or could it potentially be something that _she’d_ done to them? She’d triggered them. Was she the trigger?

 

She felt ready to heave. She sat up, stomach twisting, nausea closing her throat. Her heart began to pound in her ears. She pulled her limp legs up to her chest and put her head on her knees. Her core was wet and aching, uselessly. She made herself breathe deep, in and out, as slow as possible. She had to be here. She had to be present for Hiccup. To do whatever she could to help. To not hurt them anymore than they already were.

 

Astrid’s heart squeezed in her chest. More than anything, that’s what she wanted. To help. She turned slowly back down onto her left side, feeling cold and bare but firm. Ready. She examined their face again. They looked blank, calmer. Their gaze tracked the surface of the bed closest to her face but no more.

 

A desperate courage seized her mouth. “You. You can tell me whatever you want. Or don’t want. I promise it will be ok with me.” She smiled the brightest she could manage, was comforted that after a beat they returned it a little before they opened their mouth, hesitating, then started to talk.

 

“I… I want to get you off. I want to give you all the orgasms you’d ever want for the rest of your life.” They said these outrageous words steadily. “But— but I don’t want you to give me one.” They flicked their gaze up defiantly. Astrid stared back, trying not to react. Not sure how to. They cleared their throat. “I’m… going to get off. In my own time. Because of you, but not directly.” Something brightened in their face. “You’re definitely, definitely going to make that happen, so don’t worry.”

 

“I don’t understand. Do you not want me to touch you?”

 

They looked mournfully at her. “Yes? I guess. Yeah.”

 

“So, anything under the underwear is off limits.” She didn’t know what she was feeling beyond a strange ripping sense of loss. Astrid blinked, blinked again, tried not to give in to the threat of the tears building up in her head.

 

“No, no, as long as it’s not my anus, you can touch my ass, like… that’s not a problem.” Hiccup sounded like they were about to laugh.

 

“But your… everything else down there.” 

 

“Yeah, no. I… maybe after… someday? I… it’s complicated.”

 

She stilled. “Is it because gender stuff?”

 

“Part of it.” They frowned to themself. “Part of it… I…” Swallowing, “Yeah, I don’t know if I can deal with you touching my dick yet. I don’t know how I feel about it. I’m still me, even if you do. I just. Don’t know yet.”

 

“I—yeah, I’m willing to do whatever you want. Whenever you want. If you ever want.” She was babbling. Her mouth felt empty and dry as sawdust.

 

“It’s weird, because… I didn’t expect… I mean, I don’t want to brag or anything, but I’ve had a ton of people touch it over the years. But with you, it’s…somehow it’s different.”

 

Her heart sank. Astrid didn’t want to think of what that difference could be, especially if it was somehow related to a lack of trust…like the possibility that they didn’t trust her to respect their identity, or their body. Thinking of them not trusting her in any way made her want to evaporate away to nothing, but there was also nothing she could do to change that. She couldn’t help but feel guilty about all the times she’d not trusted Hiccup in the past about things insignificant. And then crowding behind that shame were all the things that she still doubted about them, despite everything she felt for them. She dug her nails into a palm, trying to drive the thoughts away.

 

Still, she felt unaccountably protective, and worried. “Hiccup, I do have a question though. I don’t need to hear the whole story if you don’t want to talk about it, but…” She forced herself to continue. “Did you ever—I mean, did anyone ever… force you to do stuff. Make you do things that you didn’t want to do?”

 

“Uh. Yeah, of course.” Hiccup shrugged. “I made a lot of boneheaded mistakes at first. Got involved with people who didn’t really give a fuck about me. Or with people who… weren’t good listeners.” They snorted. “But you learn what types to avoid. Capitol party scenes can be—”

 

“Don’t.” She fought the growing weight of her tongue. “Hiccup, that’s… it wasn’t your fault. You’re not… you never deserved that.”

 

They shrugged again, their voice growing sharp. “Sometimes it is. Sometimes you go looking for trouble.”

 

“No. No, it’s never. It’s never your fault if someone does something like that to you.”

 

Hiccup met her eyes, an angry grimace crossing their face. “Then whose fault is it, if you flirt and then don’t like the consequences? I’m an asshole; I led a lot of people on. At first by accident and then later—“

 

She couldn’t stand to hear anymore. “They were the assholes, Hiccup. Don’t argue me on this.” She put her palm on their cheek, only belatedly realizing that she had landed directly on the bruise she’d given them the previous day. Embarrassed, she took her hand back, tucked it under her chin. “You’ve never deserved to have anyone touch you except how you’ve wanted. Anyone who can’t respect that is wrong.” She couldn’t quite meet their eyes.

 

“Yeah, ok. I won’t argue with you.” Hiccup scooted closer, kissed her forehead. “I’d rather be having sex with you, anyway.” They brushed her bangs and front tendrils back behind her ear.

 

She smiled painfully to herself. _This little shit._ “I want to, too. You still owe me from before. Although sounds like… driving you into the ground isn’t an option.” She decided not to mention that she’d never actually done that to anyone before. Seemed pointless when it was off the table indefinitely.

 

They sighed, long and hard. “It’s really tempting.” Hiccup squeezed their eyelids closed, shook their head. “It’d probably better wait for later. Like. For condoms. And me getting over my hangups. But your enthusiasm is noted.”

 

Astrid blinked. _Birth control. Protection._ “I’m not saying that we’re gonna… do that, but… there’s no chance of getting pregnant, cycle-wise, not now. And you’re clean, right? And we’re probably going to die within the month, anyway. So.”

 

Hiccup rolled their eyes. “You’ve really got to have faith in me. We’re not going to die. Not that easily. So we’ve got to be careful if we ever get to that point.”  

 

“Oh, so you’re guaranteeing that if I’d got pregnant, we’d have to figure out what to do with a potential child? Is that what you’re saying?”

 

They looked back at her, clearly not sure how to take that.

 

She laughed. “I can’t even— Hiccup, imagine a couple of fuck-ups like us being parents.” It was such a foreign, unexpected thought. Ridiculous. “Completely impossible.”

 

“Yeah. Impossible.” They were thoughtful, pausing to suck the inside of a cheek. “I… I want it to be possible though.” Flushing visibly, they started, looked away. “Not saying that I want children. I— I just want to have a future. I want it to be an option that we could fight about, or even just be able to think about.” Hiccup gave her a longing glance, something they apparently did a lot nowadays, ever since Astrid had started this thing. Astrid’s brows pinched together, a weight settling down through her chest. 

 

“Well, we don’t know if we’re going to get to that point, either.” She flipped to her back. Her arm was numb with sleep, prickling back awake. She rubbed at her forearm and elbow, feeling angry and dissatisfied. The mattress dipped beneath her slightly as Hiccup propelled closer.  

 

“Astrid.” 

 

She kept on rubbing, trying to get feeling back into her arm.

 

“Astriiid.”

 

“What.” She looked up to see them on both elbows, beaming down at her with the lopsided grin that she was starting to associate with Hiccup being an absolute ass. An absolute ass that was good at sex.

 

“I wanna go down on you. Like, really bad. Would you like that?”

 

She grunted, turned her head away. _This dork thinks they can just…_

 

“Astrid, please, stop pouting. You’re pouting, and it’s not fair. I don’t like feeling like I’m the older, more mature one in this situation.”

 

Astrid glanced back at them pointedly. “You’re not. Don’t get any ideas.”

 

They leaned in further until their chin was resting on her shoulder, their bright eyes uncomfortably close. 

 

She closed her own eyes, wanting to resist, wanting to avoid. “It feels like you’re always trying to cheer me up with sex.”

 

“That a bad thing?” An arm of theirs was slowly snaking around her waist, sending goosebumps. She tried to pat the chills down off her arm, then let both her arms fall to her sides.

 

“It is when I feel like I’m being manipulated the fuck out. Manipulated _to_ fuck.”

 

Hiccup nuzzled her ear. “I just want you to be happy.”

 

She sighed. “No, what you really want is for me to agree with you about this plan of yours with the rebels. It’s not even your plan. It’s theirs. And I can’t just trust someone like that.”

 

Hiccup scooted their body down, half-lying on and half-leaning against her, their shirt bunching up between the two of them, and placed their head on her boob. They breathed heavily into her skin. “Do you trust me?” they mumbled, their lips pressing into the cushy flesh. 

 

“It’s not about trusting you.”

 

Their arm tensed around her waist. “But you still don’t think I’m making the right call.”

 

“I don’t know. But…” Astrid treaded forward like she was crawling, testing an ice pond ahead of her. “I’d want you to find out more before you commit.” She breathed in deep. “Because if everything goes south, I’m the one who’s going to have to try to fix your mess.” _Either I’ll have to try to keep you alive. Or… mourn you. Then die, myself._

 

Hiccup lifted their head. “So, you’re saying… yes?”

 

“No. I’m saying, find out more.”

 

“But… but you’re willing to try.”

 

“Not in so many words.”

 

“But you’re coming around. You’re… you’re starting to consider it, right?” They bounced, their torso and their chin colliding into her body.

 

“Ow! Fuck, Hiccup, that’s my breast you’re smashing. It actually is attached to me. Hurts.”

 

“Sorry, sorry.” They slumped down and began kissing it. “Sorry, wonderful breast of glory.” They licked the nipple long and slow, making Astrid’s cunt clench. “Sorry, gorgeous, soft, plump perfection.”

 

“You’re fucking ridiculous.” Astrid didn’t know whether to smack their head or pull them up to her face to kiss them silly. Or just let them continue what they were doing. “Don’t you dare name it.”

 

“Oh, do they already have names?” Hiccup mouthed around the breast as far down as they could, then slid mouth and tongue and teeth up slowly, finally centering on the tip, before pulling off with a pop. Astrid let the shudder rock her body, but firmly kept her mouth closed and quiet. She realized that she had at some point grabbed at the sheets and so made sure to let go.

 

“No. They’re mine. My left breast and my right breast. That’s all they need to be known as.” She was sounding breathier than she’d liked for such a firm statement.

 

“Got it. No nicknames.” Hiccup breathed over the slick wet they’d left over her nipple before kissing it lightly. “Now can I go down on you?”

 

She rolled her eyes. “Fine, I guess.” 

 

Hiccup clucked their tongue. “Not gonna unless you really want it.”

 

“I’m not begging for you. You’re a little shit.” She spread her legs a little. “Go for it, if you really want to so badly.”

 

Hiccup cocked their head, a little miffed. “You were the one who’s so worried about people being forced to do stuff. I was just checking.”

 

She groaned, gritted her teeth. Closed her eyes. Said, “Fuck you. Don’t joke about that.”

 

“That’s my line.” Hiccup ran a hand down her belly as they—finally, finally—repositioned themself further down her body. “I want you to take me seriously. Enough to tell me what you want.”

 

“Stop being horrible, then.” Astrid looked up to see them kneeling around her thigh, straddling it with partial weight. Their nub of a calf nudged into the inside of her knee, making her leg jerk.

 

“Ok.” They stroked her waist, letting their nails dig a little into her flesh. They dipped down and pressed lips against her belly button, then slid down, nipping along her happy trail. Their palms pressed outward, rested over the round of her hips, fingers in a subtle quiver against her old burns.

 

She arched her back a little, readjusting against the mattress but also trying to account for the extra tension building in her hips and thighs. Hiccup spread their fingers further around her hips, smiling up at her. 

 

“Get off my leg, hon.” She reached to brush some hair out of their face, having finally felt her mood relent. “You’re going to need the space.”

 

Hiccup slid off, settling in between her thighs as she drew her legs up and out a little. They smirked down at her crotch. 

 

“This is going to have to come off first,” they said wryly as they lifted the waistband of her undershorts and letting the elastic flick back.

 

“Then your shirt is coming off with it.” She grabbed at their shoulder and caught a handful of sleeve. “C’mon, let me see you, babe.”

 

They froze for a split second. “I’m… Oh. Uh, ok. Guess fair’s fair.” They wriggled backwards out of the shirt as Astrid pulled it forward off by the one sleeve. She immediately noticed why they must have hesitated. The gradation between untouched darker skin and splotchy, somewhat lighter and definitely less supple skin fanned its way around their chest in waves, some of the lines following distinct bodice structures that Astrid recognized from several well worn dresses in their wardrobe. The contrast of the deep color of their waist to their lighter shoulders and arms was pretty distinctive. Strange that she’d seen them in their bathrobe earlier without any notice, and she’d had her hands all over their back earlier and hadn’t felt a change in skin texture. But then, she didn’t have that much sensation left in her fingers anyway. The nerve damage had been pretty extensive.

 

Hiccup, finally free of the shirt, flopped forward and landed on their hands on either side of her waist, tucking head back to look down past her hip in between darting a quick glance or two at her. 

 

“Thank you.” She really did feel way too much, protective and possessive and so dazzled, like her very bones vibrated in joy at this sight of this overgrown child. Tossing the shirt aside, she stretched her arms out again, dragging her finger tips down the now bare expanse of chest, flat and quivering under her touch. Their nipples were dark and tiny and ugh, she would give so much to be able to return the favor of sucking them, tickling them with her tongue until Hiccup was crying for breath. She fell back from her reach across, drinking in the sight. “Hiccup, you’re really— you’re beautiful. Your body.” 

 

They jerked their shoulders in a spasm. “Nothing, really. I’m just skinny. Can’t really keep muscle on. Or anything else.”

 

“Hiccup, let me compliment you without your arguing with me. Please. I mean it. You’re gorgeous.”

 

“Oh. Just assumed you liked me for my brains, I guess.” They flipped a lock of hair in what would have passed for a jaunty manner except they were too stiff. A smile was beginning to form, though, creeping from end to middle like a bow being strung. 

 

“Lovely, too, I’m sure. Definitely happy for any evidence I see of them.”

 

“Now who’s the flatterer.” They didn’t keep the usual sarcastic tone flat enough, spoiling the effect. Astrid just wanted to kiss the charming shake of delight that Hiccup’s lips bore. 

 

She gave into the temptation, lifted onto her elbows before crunching forward to drag her mouth against theirs in a quick twist. Settling back, she opened her legs wider and lay an ankle on the small of Hiccup’s back. She pressed her heel in, a promising springiness in her hips. “It’s not flattery if it’s true.”

 

Hiccup snorted, ducking down and back, allowing Astrid’s leg to sweep up and along their spine as they settled in between her thighs. She hooked her knee over their shoulder, tense with the slowness of time trickling through her folds. Hiccup must have sensed her impatience because they had splayed hands over her hip bones and not even completely worked her underwear off before they buried their face into her. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> slight panic attack, consent negotiation, ptsd - dissociation (sexual assault trauma) from character pov, slight non-con situation and discussion of previous sexual assaults/dub-con/non-con experiences

_These shorts are goners,_ was an inane thought that passed through Hiccup’s mind as the fabric stretched and audibly ripped when Astrid finally kicked the last leg free of her underclothes with their help and slammed her other knee up around their neck. She moaned— _she was actually moaning_ —and arched under their mouth, her sex under their tongue and lips fluttering a little, almost kissing back. She tasted so good. Her clit was throbbing a steady beat into Hiccup’s upper lip as they licked into her cavity, the beat amplified through her femoral arteries into their ears. Hiccup didn’t know why they hadn’t expected just how _hot_ it would be to have her legs wrapping around their head in a crushing hold. Maybe they’d just never really thought something like this was possible, like her thighs gripping their face closer into her cunt or the way they could hear her ragged moans and soft exclamations. They pressed further in, raking teeth lightly down her vulval canal before running tongue back up, hitting her clit but barely. 

 

She gasped, hips jerking up. Hiccup kissed into her mound, still avoiding her clit, pulling back the folds with a finger and pushing her belly tautly away and down with their other hand. She was all tension under them, her body shuddering in little bursts. It was fucking exhilarating. They were actually _fucking_ Astrid Hofferson. She was letting them do it, and she was enjoying it. Enjoying _them,_ enjoying what they were doing to her.

 

It was like everything they’d ever dared to dream, but more. The silky, slick feel of her, her stiff hair softening under the drip of her wetness, her vaginal muscles clenching as they darted tongue in and out, her massive strings of muscles bunching under the soft cush of her thighs as she drove her hips up into Hiccup’s mouth and pulled their head down into her. They couldn’t help but want to go in deeper, to find the core of her, the source of the fire-hot beat that was spreading from her to them, echoing in their head and more distantly down in the depths of their belly, causing them to tremble and their dick to pulse. Hiccup looked up while nibbling closer to her nub, catching their breath at the sight of Astrid clutching at her left breast as she shuddered, her neck falling back and exposed like a sacrifice. She was so utterly beautiful. They had never seen her so untrammeled, so unselfconscious. 

 

It was terrifying. Hiccup gritted their teeth together and dove back in, kissing her over and over, suddenly unable to think through each motion—how best to tease her, build her up to climax, keep her from ever going off the edge—and just made themself mindlessly lavish her with the burning feelings of anxiety in their throat that plunged down through their tongue. Astrid was putting herself in their hands, her most tender parts offered up to their mouth, her old wounds and stark scars bared under their fingertips. She was just… doing it. She’d asked if she could have it, if she could have _them,_ and she was— she was making it happen, for real. It scared the shit out of them. She’d want to have them back in return. She’d want reciprocation. Caressing her rounded hips, hands growing slick with sweat and her arousal, they didn’t want to think about what reciprocation would look like. What giving themself to her would be. 

 

What they might lose in the process.

 

Their fear yawned open in their chest, threatening to swallow them. Astrid was breaking herself wide open for them. And Hiccup was a fucking pathetic little coward who couldn’t, who wouldn’t, do the same for her, who kept parts back. They were a selfish creep. They always got themself into situations where they didn’t want to deliver, or just couldn’t—because stuff was wrong with them, stuff was too complicated, too nuanced for normal people to understand— and then they would try to flake out, escape, and in the process fuck everything up.

 

They hated how much they always had made things unnecessarily complicated. How they always had, from the very beginning, fucked it up for Astrid, no matter much they were trying to help.

 

_I’m just going to make it worse, in the end._  

 

Astrid’s quickening shallow breathing brought them back to themself. She panted, whined as Hiccup lifted their head from her crotch, and then fumbled her hands away from her breasts, reaching out for them. Her hand landed sloppily against the side of their face, bouncing off the bruise before burying into their hair, stroking it. She slightly lifted her head, looking through barely opened lashes down at them, and swept hair off their forehead. Hiccup shivered, a chill from her hand and the air cold against their sweat.

 

Astrid had finally caught her breath. “You— ok? Why’d— you stopped.” Her hand was heavy against the crown of their head. They grimaced, tried to smile, knew that they were failing horribly. Their whole body felt hollow.

 

They couldn’t make themself say anything. 

 

Mouth was dry, throat was tight, explanation was impossible, but at least they could try to make her come. Get her to her climax, and somehow take care of themself, and then just… something. Do something to stop feeling like such a failure and a wreck of a human being. Maybe if they could just get her to get some sleep like they’d been meaning to from the beginning, they could have some time to figure something out. Maybe they’d just have to disappear before they’d stop wrecking stuff for her, for themself, for them both.

 

_Fuck. I’m just— The only things I’m good at are sex and making plans that barely work, if at all. And neither of these things are actually going to help her. Worthless._

 

They blinked back the tears that were threatening to form, and forced their head back down. They _were_ going to finish this one thing at least, this one task of going down on her—that _they_ had suggested—and get her to come, at least once if not multiple times like she deserved, and deal with this ‘emotions’ shit later. Or never. They’d barely started, had just touched lips to her clit again, planning to work their way down and up in dizzying patterns (they hoped), when a tug on their hair got their attention.

 

They looked up. Astrid had risen onto one elbow, staring at them, her hand still wrapped in a lock of their bangs. 

 

“Hiccup. I— something’s wrong.”

 

“No. Nothing is wrong.” They bent their head down again.

 

Another tug. “No, you’re not—“ She took a deeper breath and her face took on a blazing, concerned aspect. “I don’t want you to do anything if you’re not enjoying doing it.”

 

“Who says I’m not enjoying it?” It came out defensively, way more defensively than Hiccup had intended.  

 

She released her handful of their hair, smoothing more of the stringy mess back again from their face, then unhooked a leg from Hiccup’s neck, sighing as she did so. Hiccup heard a pop from her joints as she stretched it and lay it down next to them, only barely touching their side. The loss of contact plus Astrid’s insistence on not leaving this alone left them feeling even more cold and bare. They lay their head down on her pubic mound, her hair fragrant with arousal and the base notes of her scent. Astrid let the other leg slide off their shoulder and a little down their back before gathering the limb back to the bed. 

 

“Come here, hon. I need you up next to me now.”

 

“But you’re not finished— I mean, did you?…“ Hiccup trailed off meaningfully.

 

“We can worry about that later. I want you closer.”

 

Hiccup smirked, “Can’t get much closer than where I am already,” but complied, something in her voice tugging at them, commanding them. They crawled up and out of her legs and then scrunched their body up the mattress alongside her. Their erection stayed an uncomfortable reminder against the bed that neither of them were finished—that this romp continued to be way more complicated than Hiccup had ever imagined, and that Hiccup had several reasons to feel awful. Still, Astrid taking control of the direction this was going in was comforting. It felt right. It had to be a good thing—she’d know what to do and that meant that Hiccup wouldn’t be able to screw it up as easily. If they followed her lead, things would end up ok. 

 

Right? Better than Hiccup’s own plans ever had, anyway.

 

They’d come level with Astrid’s head when she turned onto her side to face them. She searched their face, her deep brown eyes narrowed in concern and anxiety. That expression seemed so incongruous on the face of someone they’d just been eating out. A hot trembling shame dug into their face and curled around their throat.

 

Before she could say anything, Hiccup blurted out, “I want to show you something,” and lunged towards her face, grabbing the side of her unscarred jaw with one hand and kissing her. 

 

She broke away for a sec. “What—“ but they pressed in, kissing her again, opening their mouth against hers, licking against her. Astrid finally responded, sliding a hand over theirs, letting their tongue in, before pulling back.

 

Hiccup smiled, batting their eyelashes at her. “You like?”

 

“You… wanted me to taste my vaginal fluids?”

 

“Oh, c’mon, so clinical. I wanted you to know how good you taste.”

 

“You think I don’t already know.”

 

“Well… yeah?”

 

She rolled her eyes but smiled back. “Hiccup, I’ve been eaten out before. When I was just a teenager, yeah. But we kissed and stuff afterward. Like people tend to do in these situations.”

 

Hiccup tried not to pout. “Well, it’s my first time giving you head. It’s exciting for me.” They frowned. “And that was years ago. You might have tasted different anyway.” Possibilities of various factors in changes in diet alone affecting body fluids filtered through their brain.

 

Astrid grinned, reached down her body, and brought her hand back up, a couple fingers glistening. “Is it really so hard to find out?” She lifted them to her nose, before darting her tongue against them. It was impossible to stop themself from taking her hand to their own mouth, licking along her fingers and then sucking at her fingertips. 

 

“Tastes a bit different. Hand flavor.” They clasped her hand in theirs, stroking the back of her palm, fingertips catching against her rough scars, feeling freshly aroused and happy, like a balloon was being blown up in their chest. When they glanced up at her, she was smiling back, something like relief in her face.

 

“You’re really— you really are doing ok, then.” Astrid leaned in closer and kissed an eyelid, the pressure of her lips light and gentle and long.

 

They tried not to sputter against her neck. “I always was.” 

 

She drew back, covering their hands with her other, and squeezed her eyes shut for a beat. “If you say so.”

 

“I do! I was… I was just. Taking a break.”

 

“Which you definitely deserved.” She smiled again, breathtakingly, and pecked a kiss against their mouth. “You. You know you’re really good at this. Really good at making me feel good.”

 

Something cracked inside. Relief and joy and a wave of frustration at themself flooded through. “I… that’s good. That’s what I want.” _More than anything._  

 

“So, you know that I want the same for you, right?” A slight return of that anxiety covered her face, clouded her bright eyes. “If there’s anything that I need to do to help, or if you have to… to take breaks, or stop, or just tell me no about something, I’m ok with it. I’m one hundred percent willing.”

 

“Me… me too.” Embarrassment warmed their face, but a calm had already centered itself down into their gut. They let themself blow the breath out that they’d not realized they’d been holding. She ducked her head down and rested it against their chest, enfolding them into her arms. 

 

_Astrid._ The thought, the name, flickered like a candle in their mind, burning brighter as she squeezed them tighter. _I love her._

 

They hugged back, something wanting to burst inside. They wouldn’t let it. They would keep these feelings inside and treasured, kept against the day that both of them had survived and escaped. Never mind that they’d already said as much that they loved her, more than once. Words were just words at this point. But they could actually do something for her, like finish what they’d started. They patted her side, wriggling back a little. She let go, lifted her head from where she’d been warming the skin of their chest with her breath, and pressed her lips against theirs.

 

It was so easy to just kiss back. To enjoy the slide of her chapped lips against their slick ones, the taste of her mouth and her vag mingling together between their tongues, how she would breathe in through her nose and out again in long and short bursts alternating, her breath stirring the hairs on their face, because she was too greedy, too unwilling to stop to breathe, her fingers brushing lightly along their jaw and neck and along the nape of their neck and down their back, her two hands more than enough to drive all coherent thought out of their mind, but then, now, both of their chests were naked and rubbing against each other. The feel of her firm, thick nipples nudged across their skin like two points of wandering heat, and it was so good. She felt so good against them.

 

They forgot what they had wanted to do for her until she swung a leg over their hips, her wet heat now pulsing against Hiccup’s thigh, and they froze, hands tangled in her hair, for just a second, but a second too long. They tried as fast as possible to resume kissing and stroking back her hair but Astrid had already noticed, was already taking her leg back and stuttering half-formed words of apology.

 

Hiccup didn’t want to hear it. Didn’t want her to stop. Didn’t want to make it a big thing, but, too late, it was already. Because Astrid was drawing back, giving them space, but that just made them feel more upset, more… wrong. Not enough. And they knew that they weren’t looking good or calm right now, which would make Astrid even more worried, more distant.

 

“Dammit. Fuck.” They swiped at their eyes, sniffed, and grabbed for her shoulders, pulling themself closer, crushing their mouth against hers, feeling like they were begging for her to take them again. She kissed back, but only softly. The feelings were building up in their throat, threatening to choke them, so they finally just said, “Astrid. Hold me,” cursing how close to crying they sounded.

 

Astrid, at last, gingerly wrapped her arms around them, tucking an arm under their neck and wrapping it around their shoulders. She hesitantly kissed along their jaw.

 

“Astrid. Please. Can you— I want your leg around me too.” 

 

“But you—“

 

“I was just surprised.” They shook their head and gripped her harder. “I wasn’t scared.” The anger that carried through their voice was unexpected. “I’m not _broken_ , Astrid. Don’t treat me like I’m some fragile thing.”

 

Astrid pulled her neck back a little, glancing at Hiccup’s face. “I’m sorry. I get it.” Her tone was mournful, confused. “I just. Don’t want to accidentally hurt you. Or scare you.” She sighed, burying her face into their neck, sending a shitload of chills down their spine. “Or make you feel bad. I’m sorry.” She was silent for a moment before mumbling into their skin, “Will you help me? To know what you want?”

 

“Only if you promise to treat me like I’m normal.” It came out like a challenge. 

 

“What do you want to do, then?” She’d lifted her head and was already sliding her thigh back over, the welcome weight and wetness meeting Hiccup’s thigh like a kiss.

 

“You. Just keep on doing whatever you want, following… previously established guidelines. And I want to make you come.” 

 

She smiled wanly. “And if I accidentally do something?”

 

“I’ll let you know.”

 

“Will you really?” The undertone of _Will you be able to?_ was unmistakable.

 

“Astrid, it’s you. Of course I can.” 

 

“What if I’m not sure?” She looked down at the small space between their bodies, biting her lip.

 

“Don’t stop unless I say _stop._ ” Hiccup leaned in closer, placed their forehead against hers. Her eyes were huge in their vision, fluttering a little with emotion that they didn’t want to examine. 

 

And then somehow they were kissing again. Delicately at first, their nose brushing against her cheek, but Hiccup started adding teeth and tongue and it wasn’t long before Astrid was the one pressing for advantage, rolling Hiccup back into the mattress and raising herself over them, almost on her knee and slanting her pelvis half over their hips. She wasn’t moving her hips against them, which was a pity, but it was something they could work with. They skimmed their hands down her waist, trying to not think about the amount of scar tissue, then rubbed along the creases between her thighs and her hips, rejoicing in the plump fullness, grabbing at her ass, trying to pull her closer. She finally let her full weight relax against them, her kneel flattening as she sank down onto them, their clothed erection brushing against, covered by the softness of her belly.

 

There was no better thing than to have her heft pressed against every inch of their torso, her own arousal spreading onto their thigh, as she kissed them. She began to kiss more slowly, drawing Hiccup’s mouth up with hers, letting her lips slide up and off. The deliberate pace felt more urgent, though, as she drew their breath up through their lungs, leaving them gasping at the end, searching for her mouth to breathe life back into them. They opened their eyes at just such an end to see her looking down at them, a soft, proud look on her face, before she dipped down again to tease more breathlessness out of them. Astrid kissed even deeper than before, something about the pressure shooting trembles through their arms, which barely could hang onto her unless they dug their nails into her waist. She arched her back in response, Astrid’s hips jutting against theirs.

 

A groan escaped her, and she undulated her hips back, grinding. There it was again, a moan deeper than they’d ever heard from her, reverberating from her chest to theirs, and she thrust against the top of their thigh, against their hip socket. She was closing her eyes, taking a hand from around Hiccup to lean on it, thrusting and grinding back, again and again and falling to her elbow, beginning to pant as she squeezed her face closed tight, chasing her pleasure against them. And Hiccup could only look on, look on at her in awe, feeling like a voyeur, feeling helpless. 

 

They chilled, even under her weight and heat, as she thrust further up their body, exhaling a raw exclamation as she ground against their erection. Hiccup was trapped. They vaguely felt their body shift, shudder, with her motions, saw it vibrating and shaking from under her body’s movements, but they were numb, watching her. They could see their arms somehow still around her but couldn’t feel what they were touching. With an effort, they found their fingers and made them let go. Their arms fell limply. Astrid thrust forward again, leaning down to kiss them, hair trailing from around her face.

 

“S— st—“ They couldn’t control their tongue.

 

She dipped down, touching her mouth to theirs. Hiccup’s lips were nerveless on their face, only feeling her pressure against them. Astrid didn’t kiss long, though, pulling back.

 

“St— st— stop—“ they finally stuttered, cringing. They couldn’t see anything, couldn’t hear anything but the pounding of a drum in their ears. But she’d stopped. 

 

She’d stopped. 

 

Hiccup remembered to breathe, let air fill their lungs a few times, trying to calm down, trying to come back, and realized they were clenching their eyes shut and peeked out. Astrid, blurry, was still resting on her elbow, her other arm still wrapped under their neck and shoulder. Her fingertips gently stroked the back of their opposite shoulder blade.

 

They closed their eyes again, swiped at them weakly with the back of a hand, and sobbed a gasp. It was the stupidest thing. They were so stupid. They’d… they’d been the cause of that, of Astrid feeling good, and they’d been the one who’d not been able to handle it. And now she wasn’t going to understand, or want them anymore, and they were both going to die, because of them. Because of Hiccup—

 

That train of thought was interrupted by the very strange sense that Astrid was lying against them again, her face in their neck. 

 

She tightened her arm around their shoulders. They could feel her mouth working against their skin, like she was trying to figure out what to say next. Finally, “You were right.” She paused, the hesitation filling Hiccup with dread. But she went on. “You were right. You did it. You told me when something was wrong.” Something moist dripped onto their shoulder. “So I don’t have to be so scared of hurting you, right? Because you’re able to tell me before I do. You can stop me.” She shuddered. 

 

Their throat clogged too much to say anything, but they nodded. 

 

“I’m sorry, Hiccup. I’m sorry that I wasn’t paying attention.” She sniffed, a wet, shaky sound. “Not in time, anyway. But you still said something.” She whispered, “You did good.”

 

They took a breath, made themself respond. “Y—yeah.”

 

“It was. Something about me humping you.” Her question mark seemed to float in the air, not actually connected to her voice.

 

Hiccup gulped, trying to gather words, or thoughts. The whole thing was a blank. A blank of terror. “I was scared. I think.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“I… couldn’t feel? My body. It was weird.”

 

She pressed a light kiss against them and hummed.

 

The meaning of what had happened curled around their brain in a fog. “It… reminded me of when people would… hold me down. Make me do stuff. Or they’d do stuff and have fun but not let me have any.” A flare of anger. “They didn’t care about it, anyway.”

 

She slid herself half off them, keeping her arm under their neck. “That’s not fair to you.”

 

“No, it wasn’t. I was just a… a tool. Something pretty for them. Something… different. Different than their usual.”

 

“Exotic, maybe?”

 

“Hmmph. Maybe. Not many people liked me for me.” They turned their head towards her. “Not like you. You… listen. And you like kissing.” A thought occurred. Not for the first time today. _No way._ “You. You haven’t had an orgasm once this entire time. Not at all today.”

 

“I? Am I supposed to have?” She blinked like she was missing something that Hiccup was saying.

 

“Astrid, I’m good at this stuff because I’ve had loads of hookups with random people at parties. Not because I’ve gone for marathon makeout sessions.” Now that they were thinking about it, this was fucking weird. “You don’t even ask for what you want. You just give. And give.” _Excepting what happened just now. But still._

 

“But I do because I know that you want to give too. And I’m basically ok with anything if you are.”

 

“That’s… not party-scene at all.”

 

“Hiccup, we both know that I’m not party-scene. I never was.”

 

“But… but how can you get what you want if you don’t tell me!”

 

She snorted. “I already got what I wanted.” She poked them in the ribs.

 

Hiccup looked down at their ribs, then back at her, horrible disbelief dawning. “You can’t just want _me_!” 

 

Astrid just looked at them. 

 

“But!”

 

“Kissing you is a nice bonus, but it’s because it’s you that I want it.”

 

They sputtered, turned their face away.

 

She leaned over, caressing their neck. “You’re important to me. Remember?”

 

Hiccup heaved themself to sit up, feeling light, like they might float away. “So you just want to be with me. No other agenda.”

 

She got up on a hip. “That’s what I said. I like you. I really like you.”

 

“So, it wouldn’t matter how bad I am at sex or making escape plans?”

 

Astrid quirked an eyebrow at them. “What’s going on in that head of yours? When did I ever say that those things were important to why I liked you?”

 

“You! You did! You like that I make you feel good! And if I don’t get this thing worked out with the rebels…” They found themself looking away, anywhere.

 

“I’m still going to be with you. I wouldn’t abandon you for that.”

 

“But you might need to. If I can’t hack this thing, if it’s safer for you to just take care of yourself, that’s what I want. I’ll give you all the info I can about the Arena when we get there and—“

 

“Hiccup, stop.”

 

They blinked, turned their head towards her a fraction.

 

“You need to believe me. I like you the way you are.”

 

“Yeah, ok.” They didn’t dare roll their eyes, not with the way she was watching their face like a hawk.

 

“I like _you_. And I’m going to stay with you for as long as I live in these Games. Because I want to.” Her voice had turned stony, stony but clear.

 

They looked from underneath their bangs. She had that blazing certainty thing going on in her face again. It seemed impossible, but Astrid believed what she was saying.

 

Annoying for more than one reason. “Well, then you need to remember that you’re going to survive through these Games. Because I say so.” They jutted their chin out towards her before drawing their arms over their chest, shivering. 

 

She swiveled on her hip, coming around to lay herself gingerly down onto her side, in front of their crossed legs. “If you say so.”

 

“I say so.” They tried not to look down at her, at the concern that was blunting the brilliance of her smile, that made them want to hide their face in a pillow or between her breasts and just never show their face again, because it was too embarrassing and shameful and delightful and precious and they couldn’t believe, still couldn’t believe just how _good_ Astrid was. She was so much better than them and she was choosing to be with them. She liked Hiccup—maybe more than Hiccup liked themself. But she also didn’t know everything yet, so there was no telling when she’d be forced to turn back. Or would decide that it all was too much of a hassle. 

 

Hard to believe that she’d stay, still harder to believe that she’d leave very easily. She really did genuinely seem like she still liked them, despite the mess that Hiccup had made today, despite upsetting her so many times when they were supposed to be doing the deed and getting her off and drifting to sleep.

 

_It really doesn’t seem like she cares about the actual act_ _of sex so much as just… doing what feels good? And she wants to do what would make_ me _feel good. No rush or anything._

 

Was sex really allowed to be that simple? With no possibility of failure?

 

“Ok, so.” Her throaty voice broke into their thoughts. “Do you want to keep going?”

 

They’d been staring into space while she had spread her entirely naked and tempting and glorious body before them, a half exasperated expression now crossing her lips, swollen by kisses. As she lay back, Astrid’s breasts fell away from each other, resting on the massive slopes of her ribcage, a nipple perked into the air by the arm she crossed behind her head, the other slipping to the side in a dizzying curve paused by velvety brown, tipped by near-black. Her rosy gold flushed skin plunged and stretched taut and dipped and dimpled and striped and scarred over her solidity of bone and muscle, rounded off so satisfyingly by flesh that Hiccup didn’t know what to do. Fall into her again to be subsumed or sit forever unworthily worshipping before her—both choices were right.

 

Astrid deserved so much more than whatever fumbling adoration Hiccup could ever give her. But she said she wanted them, even like this. And she cared enough to ask which choice Hiccup wanted to take. 

 

That made the decision easy.

 

“Yeah.” 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> playful violence threat, consent negotiation

Astrid really hoped that she was doing the right thing. She really, _really_ hoped that she was, at least, not doing a bad thing.

 

But Hiccup had really scared her. No. That wasn’t right. _Astrid_ had scared Hiccup, and in the process been frightened herself, had been grieved to the heart by… all of it, by how Hiccup had been driven to terror under her, that it had happened without her even realizing it—because she’d just gone right ahead and done what she’d wanted, because it had felt good, so good, and she in the process had taken her eyes off them.

 

It was a small thing. A huge mistake.

 

One short span of seconds lost in her own pursuit of pleasure, and she’d sent Hiccup spiraling into nothingness, scared and hurt and trapped under her—her horrible, too large, too heavy, and far too strong of a body. _Shit._ It was too easy to trample people, so easy to assume that everything was ok and in the process utterly wreck things.

 

She wondered how many of those people who’d hurt Hiccup in the past had been just like her. Just thoughtless and careless enough to run roughshod. The pure white of sorrow and rage, overwhelming her at the thought of those Capitolites that had laid even one finger on Hiccup without their consent, only intensified and sharpened and then dulled and dirtied into fragments of guilt and shame.  

 

_I did it too. Without even realizing._

 

Her whole heart felt numb and achy, but instead of just giving up for the day like her mind whispered in a nagging dull roar to do— _let Hiccup rest, recover—you need to regroup, you can’t make that mistake again—_ you’re _the brilliant clod that started this and you need to be able to stop it, not rely on someone to tell you when you’re fucking up before you restrain yourself—_ she had made herself talk it through with them. Apologized. Listened.

 

She’d watched Hiccup afterwards, seeing them slowly come back from quivering like a blank, trembling leaf, to put their roots back into themself. And she was still shocked, still incredible that they’d doubted so much why she had chosen them. She’d chilled at the way their insecurities had blossomed, how they’d curled and twisted in on themself in shame, how they were so apprehensive of what Astrid thought of them after stopping her—the stubborn nerve of them thinking that she’d just give up on them because of baseless conditions on the relationship that they’d built up in their mind! All of this had sparked a raging fire drowning out the radio static roar of caution and “ _later, maybe.”_  

 

No matter what they thought about themself or about Astrid, she needed to prove to Hiccup that she wasn’t going to leave, she wasn’t going to give up on them. Even if life depended on it, she was going to stay. She _did_ want them. She _needed them._  

 

And Astrid had to convince them that they weren’t wrong for reacting the way they had, that they’d not inconvenienced her in any way—it was patently the opposite situation— and in less than half a minute the only low-pressure idea that had come to mind was proving it in the most obvious way possible—

 

—which was, if she had to get technical about it, seducing them. All she had was a shaky, vague goal to make them feel wanted and desired, remind them that she wanted them at least as much as they wanted her and that she was willing to do whatever they felt comfortable with—which was so important, considering how much there was that they _weren’t_ comfortable with. So she’d offered herself to them. She’d lain down belly up before them, feeling as low down as a snake in the grass, but unwilling to let them stare down any longer into their lap where both their groin, covered and hidden to her, and their final nub of a calf lay as painfully obvious reminders of Astrid’s own failures. She’d never protected them enough. She’d not been there at crucial points. She’d taken her eyes off them.

 

“Ok, so. Do you want to keep going?” Her heart’d pounded in her throat as she’d forced the words out.

 

She relaxed when they’d broken from their contemplation, perked up at her question, and swept a long and hungry gaze over her body, and her relief was total when they’d breathed out an affirmative and crawled and snuggled into her, willingly placing themself in her arms again. She’d not scared them off. They were ok.

 

They were more than ok. They lay in her arms for a few minutes, breathing into her neck and caressing along her collarbone, as she stroked their hair, wiry and fluffy and dampening with sweat, and rested an arm around their back. Astrid closed her eyes, fighting back the tears of relief. Hiccup sighed, their warmth blowing chills all down her spine.

 

“I like being with you.” They said it breathily, contented, and nestled their head closer under her chin, breaking Astrid’s control. A treacherous stream dripped a trail down into her hair, onto her ear. 

 

She sniffed, nodded. “Me too.” Her voice cracked. She felt so utterly unworthy. Her hand trembled as she finger-combed down to the nape of their neck, her fingers catching in a snarl of their waves. They lifted their head at that, meeting her eyes as they palmed along her left wrist until they found the tangled bit around her middle and ring fingers, teasing it free with their own fingers, slender and soft and sure, then brought their joined hands to their cheek, her rough knuckles catching on their smooth skin. Astrid stared back, their dark brown, almost midnight eyes so near that she could track the way their pupils dilated in and out. Their gentle fingers flitted in the hollow of her hand and then closed over it. She couldn’t look away. She didn’t want to. She was melting, being drawn closer, deeper into them. Hiccup’s eyelids fluttered, like they wanted to blink but didn’t dare, looking back wide-eyed. Finally she escaped and followed the line of their nose down to their lips, before dragging her gaze back up, meeting their eyes again like being welcomed home. 

 

They smiled, a quirk of a lip and a squeeze of an eye, and she couldn’t help but laugh low in delight as happiness blossomed again, as Hiccup placed fingertips at the corner of her eye, the scarred one, and brushed moisture from her temple, from her cheek. She tilted her mouth up towards them and they met her halfway, kissing the corner of her mouth, touching her chin with the slightest pressures of fingertips. 

 

Astrid didn’t want to move. It was like feeling a butterfly land on the flower you were holding, or a songbird lighting on a branch from the far side of the tree you were perched in. One false action and Hiccup would flutter away to a safer, more distant place. But they lifted up from the kiss just to kiss her again, settling down onto the opposite end of her mouth, flicking their tongue against her in the lightest suggestion. Kissing back softly, so softly, she nudged knuckles further against their cheek, spread fingers under their palm, curled her fingers around theirs, and guided their hand down to the space between them, letting go to drape her arm around their neck as they kissed her again. They brought the free hand to curl against the side of her breast, a tremble starting in their lips as they parted against her, exhaling against her. 

 

“Lemme in,” they mumbled, their mouth brushing against hers. “Please.” 

 

The saliva in her mouth smacked as she acquiesced, letting her jaw finally relax under Hiccup’s. They caressed her, tongue on inner lip and hand on breast, slow and sweet, and she began to remember all the things she still hadn’t finished, hadn’t even started. This time though, she needed to be sure. 

 

She broke the kiss, feeling like she might be about to throw an unwanted rock in a still pond. “I want—I want to kiss— I want to touch you.” Hiccup stilled, searching her face, then ducked their head, looking down. 

 

Her heart chilled over until they responded, “Yeah, sure, where?,” still staring at the breast under their hand, but their brows—about as much of their face as she could read from the angle and through their mop of hair—relaxed in even curves.

 

“Your… nipples?” 

 

They looked back at Astrid, something coiling in their expression, something like apprehension, but wilder. “Yeah. Y-yeah, yes, please.” They slid off her, leaving cold in their wake, turning onto their back, their arms stiff at their sides.

 

“You… you sure?” Astrid rolled over onto her side, unable to interpret. The body language was off. Their expression…

 

“Please.” 

 

“Ok.” She rolled further onto her stomach, elbow-crawled her way over, and stopped, pausing on the edge of Hiccup’s body. Trepidation shook her organs, so much that she sagged against the mattress, resting her cheek on their lower ribcage rather than try to approach, rather than placing her full weight on them when it felt so much like a falling tree trunk. There was no guarantee that she wouldn’t hurt them, being what she was, considering what she’d already done.

 

They breathed underneath her, their ribs hitching, expanding not quite on beat.

 

“Astrid, please. Pleease.” A hand found its way into her hair, stroking along her hairline, digging nails against her scalp. “Astrid, I— you don’t know.” 

 

She lifted her head up at that. 

 

“I—I’ve wanted you to do this. For _so long._ ” Their chest heaved. “Please, Astrid.”

 

Something in her shifted, broke open. Astrid swallowed dryness from her throat and met their heavily hooded eyes. “Tell me what to do.” She got back up on her elbows.

 

“Astrid. Please. Just kiss me,” like they were in pain, as they tugged at her hair, fingers slipping through some of her wispier side-bangs.

 

She gingerly placed her arm over their stomach, sliding her body up to slant against them, her mass overwhelming their slightness, feeling like she might break their bones through the weight of her own, but they sighed, then moaned in such obvious pleasure that she felt her face heat. She shifted against them further, pushing herself up towards their chest, angling herself, the slow drag of her breasts sending sharp ecstasy shivering through her. She stared down at the spread before her, Hiccup panting softly and staring at her with eyes half-open, their muscles quivering and twitching with every slightest adjustment that she made against them, inching further over.

 

Finally she’d gotten in position, Hiccup’s breast in reach of her mouth, their neck and collarbones not too far away. Hiccup threw their right leg—the longer one—over the small of her back, their heel dragging down over her ass and then wrapping an ankle between her thighs, tucking their foot under her left thigh, like they were locking her in tight against them. It sounded like her breath was echoing loudly between them, as she fought for breath, for oxygen—her nerves and anticipation and arousal all tinging with fear. But they were panting too, and under her belly she could feel their arousal hardening again, even as their expression shaded towards hazy pleasure as they met her gaze and gripped at her arms.

 

Astrid dipped her head down, brushing her unscarred left cheek against their chest. She really didn’t know what she was doing anymore. “Hiccup, I—“ She fumbled for words. She was teetering on the edge of being patronizing, not protective, she knew it, and Hiccup didn’t want that. But a part of her withered even to think that she could protect them now. 

 

 _Best to be direct._ Astrid bit the inside of her cheek before darting a glance to say, “Hiccup, I need you to tell me exactly what to do.”

 

They looked confused. “Like what? Can—can you just start already?” they panted.

 

She closed her eyes, the vivid image twisting through her mind of their warm brown skin saturated with rich gold undertones underlaying the satisfying red of fine clay, their dark nipples peeking out like jewels set in precious metal, the gentle slopes of their musculature and the fineness of their bones knit together like a piece of art. It was a sight she’d carry with her to the grave. She wanted to start, she wanted to lick and kiss and bite them breathless, God knew that she wanted to.

 

 _It’s just that… I’m scared to death._ “Hiccup, if I hurt you accidentally—“

 

“You won’t.” They’d ended on a gasp.

 

“What makes you so sure?”

 

They slid their hand up her shoulder to her neck. “I trust you.”

 

She blinked, looked away from their expectant soft glance. “My track record isn’t good.”

 

“I’ll tell you to stop.”

 

Astrid’s stomach twisted. “That’s gonna be too late.”

 

The leg of theirs that had wrapped around hers twitched, digging toenails into her quad. “Fucking hell, Astrid, I— don’t make me beg.” An edge had entered their voice. “Don’t— this is revenge for earlier, isn’t it? Gonna make me beg because I was an annoying shit to you—”

 

“No, this is me terrified out of my mind that I’m going to trigger you again,” she said, coldly, wanting to smack them. “I thought I could do this but—“

 

“Don’t you fucking even— Astrid, I’m not made of porcelain. I’m not some cracked dish that you’re going to drop. I’m not gonna break.” They stared right back at her, their lips pressed tight, like they were keeping themself from saying more. 

 

“But you just broke! Before! I did that to you!” Her throat felt raw and her head hurt.

 

“Fucking hell.” They took their hands off of her, dug the heels of them into their eyes. “Fuck.”

 

“You shouldn’t trust me. I’m just going to fuck up again—“ She tried to roll off, but Hiccup jammed their elbows back into the bed at their side and dug their foot that was propped between her thighs down into the mattress, blocking her escape, jabbing her with their toenails, this time obviously on purpose. She bit back an exclamation.

 

They slapped the mattress with both hands. “Not trust you? Fucking make me. Astrid. Goddammit, you’re the only person in this entire shit pile of a city that I can trust to pay attention to what I actually want, even though right now you’re being so goddamned awful at it. _But you’re still fucking better than anyone else I’ve ever been with._ ” 

 

“How the hell could you still be willing—“

 

“I FUCKING LOVE YOU, THAT’S WHY.”

 

Astrid stared. 

 

“How many times do I have to tell you!” They twitched, looked to the side, mumbled a little to themself before adding, “Dammit. Fuck you. I choose you. I’m asking you to do this for me. Can you just get over yourself?”

 

She felt like her eyes might bug out. Her mind was jammed, the log of a felled tree stuck crossways against the rest.

 

“You’re the one who suddenly had the great idea to tongue-fuck my nipples.” They reached out a hand to tilt her head back towards them, then let it fall on the bed, fisted in a ball. Astrid was still incapable of speech but met their eyes, narrowed and stabbing glares back at her. Hiccup cleared their throat. “It was _your idea._ But you don’t know how long I’ve dreamed about you doing stuff like that to me. You wanna know how pathetic I was as a kid? I could do just about anything to myself thinking about you except for that. I couldn’t pretend that it was you kissing me all over when _I didn’t have anyone to do that to me._ ” 

 

Astrid finally found her voice. “You— you masturbated to me?”

 

“Well, yeah. Lots.” They stared back defiantly, their whole face glowing with a blush. “I’ve… always wanted you. And now I’ve got you. So fuck you if you think you’re just going to give up because you think I’m broken. I’m _not._ ”

 

She winced, unable to stop staring at them, her eyebrows raised painfully.

 

“What,” Hiccup barked.

 

“Y—you’re just really—“

 

“Really what?” 

 

The burning in her heart exploded into her face. Her ears _felt_ red. “You’re _really_ far gone for me.” 

 

Hiccup’s severity melted a little. “Yeah, I guess I am.” They grunted in their throat and looked to the side. “So, stop with the ‘Hiccup is a tiny broken baby bird’ shit. I know that’s what you’ve been thinking.”

 

“I—I’m sorry. Yeah I—“

 

“And don’t fucking apologize. Just stop treating me like I’m about to shatter.” They frowned, looking down towards their chin. Her heart yearned, a painful squeeze in that instant, to give them what they wanted, to treat them the way they’d asked. It was what they’d always deserved.

 

“Ok.”

 

They glanced back at her, eyes roaming over her face. She knew that they were searching for signs of her lying, or keeping something back.

 

“Ok.” She repeated it. “Ok. I’ll try not to.”  

 

“Ok.” Finally they relaxed, their whole body softening under her. They closed their eyes, a little smile tugging on the edge of their mouth.

 

“Ok.” She echoed them, feeling herself calm considerably along with them. Discovering her hands had gripped tight into the sheets, Astrid forced them open, rubbing her palms open against the bed and flexing her fingers. She sighed. Her hands hurt from their near numb state, from the roughness of the sheets biting into her skin.

 

“Well, are you going to—?” At their expectant tone, she met Hiccup’s eyes, bright again, but more pleading than before. A little more desperate.

 

She smiled, wanting to fling herself down into a crying fit, wanting to destroy everything that had ever hurt them, knowing that she couldn’t do anything. She breathed deep and brought a hand up onto their chest, placed it over their heart. The gradient waves of discolored flesh under her palm were all still darker than her own paler skin, the deeper tones of brown gorgeous, mesmerizing and heartbreaking in comparison. _Fuck anyone who told you you were wrong the way you were._ She bent down, blinking back the prickling of tears, and breathed over their rightside nipple, then licked it lightly, once. They squirmed underneath her.

 

She lifted her head, gratified to see them squeezing their face tight. “So, hon, what did you dream of me doing, all these years?”

 

“I, uh…” 

 

She traced a circle around the tiny dark areola with a finger, then fingernail, waiting.

 

“I— you would— kiss, and then suck them—“ Their speech cut off with a groan.

 

“And?” Her finger continued circling.

 

“And sometimes, sometimes you’d— bite—“

 

She twitched, involuntarily pressing the hand over their heart harder. “Babe, you—“

 

“I was messed up— even as a kid—“

 

“No. You—“ Words didn’t have meaning anymore, because their heartbeat had increased steadily in rate and then skipped a beat, stuttered under her hand, and they extended their neck back, baring their soft underjaw to her, as their upper torso stretched before her for her appreciation. Words had no meaning. She shifted against them, palming down their chest from heart to the delicate nub set into the trembling muscle, and set her mouth against the other. She kissed it and tweaked the nipple on her left with her fingers, rubbing in circles around it and over it, then grabbed it between two knuckles and squeezed, and began to suck the right. Hiccup’s panting turned into a squeal at that point, their leg over her hip spasming and foot jerking in the space between her two thighs. She squeezed her knees together, holding the foot in place, tightening the stretch of their leg around her.

 

“Aaaaastri—“

 

She smiled against the nub, kissing it again, moving her lips around the area of the nipple and breathing out through her nose like a bull, delighting in the groans that produced. She picked at the left one with her hand, lifting it from its bed of muscle and letting it fling itself back, then switched her mouth over to it. Her fingers slid on the saliva she had coated over the right one, a delicious squeak emitting from the back of Hiccup’s throat at the same time. She became aware that Hiccup’s hips were twitching under her, beginning to pump erratically into the flesh of her stomach. She pressed her belly closer against them, tensing her abs, forcing her legs apart to straddle for support, still kissing and licking and sucking them. God, she was wet, the air hitting her folds just making her even more aware of how she ached, how slick and tense everything was down there, but she wasn’t going to move, not unless Hiccup said so. She nipped, the resulting cry from Hiccup reverberating in her cunt and traveling into her thighs, pooling at the bottom of her belly. Astrid held herself still, dragging teeth followed by tongue over one nub and then the other, only dipping her stomach more firmly against them as their hips began to hit a rhythm. Hiccup jerked under her, each movement punctuated by gasping. Their erection nudged against her muscles through her belly like striking flint against steel.

 

Hiccup finally found something to do with their hands instead of flailing them at their sides, fingers burrowing into her hair and catching against the tie of her bun. Their nails scraped and scrabbled against the back of her scalp, like they couldn’t hold on. Their leg curling around her body tightened against her, their other leg quivering under her thigh, their stump tickling and caressing the side of her calf.

 

Astrid hadn’t ever seen Hiccup come before but she was pretty sure they were close. They were getting a bit quieter and more unfocused, hands clutching at her arms, raggedly breathing no matter what she did to them, but pumping hips faster and faster against her, the cotton of their underwear rubbing her skin raw and hot. She gave a final kiss to their sternum and slid an arm under their shoulders, tipping herself down onto her side, gathering them with her, then held them against her, pressing tiny kisses against their chest and caressing their lower back. Hiccup tangled their calves even further through her legs, bracing against her and grinding grinding grinding, their hot breath in her hair and snaking down her back as they curled themself further down and against her shoulder, gripping her hard.

 

Then something changed, and in an instant they were so helpless against her, loosening their hold on her and almost falling away onto their back, panted syllables of nonsense now finally able to reach Astrid’s ears. She grabbed their ass, shoving their hips tighter against her lower belly, the fullness of their small buttocks a newfound delight. Astrid felt them mouth against the skin of her neck, their lips trembling, then suddenly, they shuddered, freezing, then jerking, fresh wet heat hitting her stomach between them, grunting as they throbbed against her.

 

Her cunt thrummed even harder. Astrid clutched at them, wrapping them tighter in her arms as they panted and relaxed into her, tremors shaking them.

 

God, that was a relief. They’d made it. They’d both made it through so far. Most importantly, Hiccup was ok. 

 

She herself begin to shake, her nerves working themselves out, her arousal at an unbearable peak. She kissed into their neck, trying to calm down. 

 

They groaned, turned to nuzzle a kiss into the corner of her mouth, their lips gentle and clumsy, then tucked themself back into her. Sighing against her a few times, they finally spoke. “I— I’m really sorry, Astrid, I didn’t mean— you were supposed to come first.”

 

She panted, trying not to moan. “Why apologize?” She pressed her mouth against their shoulder, shuddering. “You’ve always got weird plans going on that I don’t know about.”

 

They huffed. “This whole thing was supposed to be about you, not me and my problems.” A hand slithered down her back, cupping an ass cheek, caressing it, dipping down between the two buttocks. She jerked as their fingers brushed against her vulva as Hiccup grabbed at her butt, pulling her leg over them and running fingers back up her thigh.

 

“Huh, I didn’t know that I was supposed to be having sex all myself this time—“ she quipped, breaking off in a moan as they fingered further up, straining their arm around her to reach. Astrid batted their hand away. “What are you doing?”

 

They threw their head back from her shoulder and grinned that cheeky lopsided smile, way more sloppily than she’d ever seen. “Implementing my secret plan to finger you until you’ve gotten off at least once.” They traced a pattern over the broadness of her hip, edging toward the crease of her thigh.

 

“You could ask, you know.”

 

“What’s more satisfying is if _you’d_ ask, dearest,” they intoned.

 

She snorted. _’Dearest_.’ _That’s a new one._ “You get really annoying when you’re pleased with yourself, you know that?”

 

“Do you want me to finish you off, or not?”

 

 _Point blank._ It was weird how hard it was to answer honestly, even as she ached and throbbed. “Y-yeah, of course I do.”

 

“Then, please, let me help you.” Their face softened. “You can always ask me.” Hiccup leaned in, gave her a peck on the lips, then rubbed their cheek into hers, their sweaty skin slipping over her hardened scars. In a whisper, “I’m always willing to fuck you.”

 

Astrid burst out laughing, pushing them away from her face as she rolled onto her back. “You little turd!” 

 

Their face appeared above hers, trying to hold back a shit-eating grin and failing miserably. “I’m serious, I’m always available to help in any way possible.” 

 

She smiled back, throwing her arms around their neck and pulling them down to her lips. They collapsed against her, landing hard on a breast (it hurt, to be honest), their torso at an angle with hers, kissing back again and again, almost unable to meet her lips properly for smiling too broadly. Astrid hummed in her throat and hugged them against her, caressing their delicately muscled back as she smacked lips across their mouth. They’d pulled back for a breath, beaming down at her, when words burst out of her mouth, taking her a little by surprise.

 

“Hiccup, I’m really happy.”

 

They smiled even wider if possible and nuzzled cheeks with her again. “Me too. I like it when I make you laugh.”

 

“So that explains why you’re such a clown most of the time,” she grinned up at them.

 

“You don’t laugh enough, Astrid, that’s why I’m here.”

 

The kernel of a thought formed, but the words got stuck and jumbled on the way to her mouth. “I’m—I’m really glad that you are.” 

 

That started their eyelids fluttering in some suppressed emotion as they bent down to kiss her again. She opened her mouth to them, brushing her tongue against theirs, the shock of tender flesh against flesh shuddering through her. It was immediately necessary to grab at their head and press them down into her. Their teeth bounced and scraped against her lips, mouth knocking against mouth. She slid her tongue against theirs, tasting the sweet-sour flavor and savoring their trembling. Her need surged, her entire body yearning painfully as she clutched at the person who had done this to her, who had touched her all over leaving hot flesh now burning in unmet expectations. And she could only reach them by twisting to find them, her body feeling stripped and floating without enough of Hiccup to hold it down to the bed. The gasps they shared between them came halting, faltering. The orange haze fuzzing up her brain thickened to a heavy bright smoke. She couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe, she was trailing debris of herself, leaking like a cut tree on a hot day everywhere Hiccup had ever placed hand or mouth or dick. This whole body tension was unbearable. 

 

Astrid growled as they pulled back from her. She clung lip by lip to their mouth, scraping her teeth against their lower lip as they lifted away, as she finally let them go and let her head fall back against the bed and looked up, trying to blink her eyes back into focus. A whimper snuck out among their heavy panting, their eyes midnight and shining and staring back at her as something in their face turned. They licked their bottom lip, slowly, carefully, then quirked a cautious growing smile to the side as their expression widened and brightened. 

 

Meeting her gaze, “You really want …this,” pointing at themself with their chin. 

 

Despite herself, Astrid growled again. She tightened her hold around their shoulders.

 

“You— And you’re still refusing to ask me for what you want.” They laughed, tilting their head and rolling their eyes before looking back down at her, smiling fondly in a way that was infuriating.

 

Words finally found her mouth. “God, you’re such a—“ 

 

“Great and attentive partner, right? Yeah, I know.”

 

“Yeah, what proof do we have of that?” It was hard to enter into this interruptive and Hiccup-celebratory banter with the proper tone. She snatched the hand that was idly draping over her shoulder and dragged it down her body, tossing it down towards her belly. Hiccup let their hand flop against her, tracing against the slope of her ribcage as she squirmed against them. 

 

“I’m _so_ great, so willing to do whatever it is you want to do.” They batted eyelashes at her and palmed against her stomach, raw heat exploding under their fingers through her body. She groaned. 

 

“You already— suggested it—“

 

“And then you reminded me of the importance of asking.” The smirk they gave at that moment was maybe as unbearable as the rushing of blood through her clit and the pound of her heart echoing through her entire body. They snorted as they dragged nails lightly against her stomach, ending just a bit above her pubic mound. “You’re being weirdly passive about this. I’m just lying here waiting for you to tell me what to do.”

 

Astrid forced an exhale. The little shit was really pushing it. “Hiccup. If you don’t get your fingers up inside me this very instant, I’m going to knock your block off.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> puns, so many puns, light bondage, slight emetephobia warning

 

Seeing Astrid this flustered and mad and aroused was amazing. Mindboggling. It was thrilling that Hiccup could play her as easily as plucking a dilruba string. Every touch from them sent her vibrating and twitching and whining, and she truly seemed about to lunge, like she was gonna bite them, from desire or from frustration. Hiccup couldn’t tell what was more exciting of the two possibilities. They only knew that seeing her like this was maybe the best thing that’d ever happened to them.

 

And that growl of a command was definitely the hottest thing they had ever heard. Bar none.

 

Face burning, they’d shivered and barely peeped out a “Yes, ma’am,” before reaching further down her body, stretching against the folds of her belly as her hips jerked up. They finger-walked their way down through her hair and climbed down into the cleft of her, rubbing against her folds before finding her opening, slick and swollen and sensitive. One touch to spread her wetness up and she twisted half onto her side, crying out and slamming a leg down against the bed. Hiccup clung to her, bracing against her and working their left hand further down against her. They searched, touching gently and listening for reactions. She writhed, whining in the back of her throat, before setting a foot down and letting the other leg fall away. More room in which to work. They scooted a bit further down her body, laying diagonally down over her stomach, her ribcage heaving under them, and started sweeping fingers up and down her vulva, from clit to cunt and back again. Astrid wheezed a hot breath, gusting against their ribs, and arched her back as Hiccup finally found a rhythm against her, her hips following after them. She was seriously gushing now, silky and wet and, fuck, she’d latched onto their free arm, squeezing their elbow like it was going to crack _._

 

They heaved further over her, trying to ground her into the bed, trying to wrench their elbow out of her grasp, trying not to panic about how out of control this whole thing was, how much stronger Astrid was than them and how fucking hot that made them. It was definitely not something worthy of panic, but it was all so fucking new, she was so terrifyingly sexy and if they messed any of this up for her they’d have a hard time forgiving themself. Astrid was too damn forgiving of them anyway, with all the shit they’d ever pulled on her, and too damn accepting of all their selfish demands, so goddammit if they weren’t going to try to make it worth it for her even if her expectations were so low that just being with Hiccup was enough.

 

It seemed more than just a point of pride to make her want more than that. No, it was a necessity—to give her a taste of what they could be in the future if she’d only hold on, grab onto them long enough to care about survival. Potentially, yeah, sex could be an uncomplicatedly good thing, and in the future maybe it could become that for them, but right now life and death were heavily weighted variables in the equation.

 

Of utmost importance was that this woman come like a freight train. 

 

Hips speeding the rhythm that she’d sucked them into, she started shuddering, her moans coming more like grunts now. Astrid curled up, let go of their arm, folding into herself as her leg lost footing in the sheets and scrabbled for grip. Hiccup evaded, pushing back and away as she rolled onto her side towards them, losing contact with her for just a moment before tucking down, aiming towards her pelvis and rolling onto their own side, and diving headfirst in between her flailing thighs. Nudging head through a temporary opening between her legs as she kicked out another full body shudder, they threw an arm around her hips. 

 

That seemed to center her a little. She planted the upper leg, relieving some of the weight crushing into the right side of their neck, and fixed her foot into the mattress a little ways from Hiccup’s head. From far away they felt her grab at their waist and a knee, her head burying into them, her breath shaking in the small space between the bed and the skin of their upper thigh. With her leg lifted up, there was room to maneuver face down into her again, another chance to scoot further into her and crane neck around her pubic bone and into the glorious hot mess of her arousal. So good, mouth at her fluttering, plump vulva grinding against them, with one hand to paw at her folds, they licked and sucked, the other hand to massage into her plush ass and tease at the back of her cunt and her taint, a sensitive spot judging by her yelps, muffled distantly. 

 

Teeth only glancing short against her clit, she curled in a jerk, hand tightening into their calf. Her whimper of their name shivered through them. Impossible not to scrape lightly and slowly against her after that, crushing their lips just around but never against, easing a couple fingers in to enjoy the pulse of her muscles and the thud of her pulse. Astrid whined a ‘yes,’ breaking her rhythm to jut deeper against their hand. 

 

 _You_ really _like that._ Smiling, they tightened their grip around her hips, the tightness in their belly surging through their prick.

 

It was quick work after that, worrying her clit with teeth and tongue and pumping fingers hard against the edge of her opening until she shook, jerking and gasping, her nails scratching at tender places on their stomach and inner knee, a sweet salt sea coming in a tide against their mouth, seeping over both their hands. Her leg collapsed ponderously, falling to the side and pulling her hips flush against the bed. Hiccup followed her cunt’s slow revolution away, kissing it softly as it throbbed to a low ebb. 

 

All they could hear was her panting past the roar of blood in their ears.

 

Lifting their head, they turned and looked up her body as they soothed her with fingers instead. She trembled, turning the rest of the way onto her back, forearm limp across her forehead, eyes half-closed and face red as they’d ever seen it.

 

“How was it?” They flicked a pinky against her clit, giggling at the way her whole body scrunched.

 

She sighed, eyelids fluttering. “I don’t know. I can’t tell if I have all my limbs still.” She let her arm fall from her face, almost experimentally.

 

Hiccup laughed, nudging her armpit with the nub of their leg, and curled up onto her stomach, laying head down to fill their ears with the beat of her slowing heart through her gut. Her belly was slick under their cheek, sweat and some of their ejaculation from before prickling salty between them. Trailing one hand lightly back through her pubic hair, they caressed shiny trails of her come over her ribcage with the other, still coated with slickness. She shivered, then started.

 

“You— I mean— that was insensitive of me, the limb comment—“

 

They could only laugh again, pressing a kiss against the give of her belly. “I know what you meant. It’s good. I’m glad.” Laying their cheek against her again, they sighed, feeling her deep sigh in return underneath them, her breasts heaving before them like ships on a crest of wave. 

 

“I-it was. Really good.” She lay a hand on theirs, staying them from tracing more designs of ejaculate over her skin. “Thank you.” Her stomach jumped under them as she chuckled. “Even if it was kinda awkward to have your junk so near my face.”

 

“O-oh, I. Didn’t even think about that.” Visions of how fucking ugly that must have been for her to look at, even with their underwear still on, especially with their already creamed underwear on, crowded into their brain. With a grimace they swallowed back the bile of embarrassment.

 

“You weren’t thinking about much, and it showed.” Her voice carried a smile. “In a good way,” squeezing their hand. “Didn’t hurt that your ass is totally killer.”

 

They smiled, hid their face in her stomach. It was still really weird to hear her compliments. Amazing, but unsettling. “My view wasn’t horrible, either,” they said, not caring that it was probably muffled against her skin.

 

A squeeze of their hand again, and then she wrapped her fingers through and tucked them against their palm, her thumb rubbing gently across their knuckles. She tugged their arm. “Come here, babe.”

 

Bliss to gather self together and crawl to her as she pulled them in, bliss to settle against her side, bliss to feel her melt in relaxation at their touch. Astrid rolled into them and nuzzled into their hair. 

 

“I could stay like this forever,” she whispered, reaching across to stroke their side, fingers gentle over their ribs.

 

“I want you to.” _It’s all I want._

 

She stilled, her breath blowing soft through the hair not stuck with sweat against their neck. “If it’s possible, yes.”

 

“It is possible.”

 

“Then, yes.”

 

Hiccup turned to face her, nose to nose. “Then, you need to make it possible, with me. You need to at least goddamn _try_.” Not meaning to be that belligerent, of course it came out fully charged. But there was no turning back. How worthless would it be to try to pretend otherwise what they didn’t feel, or to soften their meaning. She had to stop with this fucking annoying, despairinglynoncommittal attitude.

 

Astrid, to her credit, didn’t rise to their bait, although they could read in her eyes that she was considering it. She just snuggled closer to drop a kiss against their cheek before drawing back, searching their face. She looked so tired.

 

“Hiccup, do you ever think about that dragon?”

 

For almost a half-minute they sputtered in near silence. Fucking question was like being slapped with a fish to the face.

 

Finally, “Toothless? That dragon? Honestly, I try not to.” The angry shock slipped through and ruined the affected nonchalance. Grinding their jaw, they fought against the ready fleet of memories of that damned muttation, the final betrayal still rotting them through and through, twisting like freezing water in their gut. “There’s no good reason to bring ‘em up. None,” they said, shooting a glare at her, trying to bite back the bitter flood of words, desperate to turn the conversation. One look and the somberness that Astrid’s face had always carried so well contradicted them. Only out of supreme obstinacy could they shake their head at her and make the token refusal. “I don’t want to talk about Toothless, especially right now when we’re so happy.” 

 

Her gust of a breath and roll of an eye recognized their objection before she continued. “The dragon never really liked me. Just barely tolerated me because you wanted me there. I would have killed it, had I met it alone. And I would have been right to do it. It was part of the Games. It was never anything but a weapon.”

 

It was the truth, a knife-sharp fact better not to drive deeper in agreement.

 

“It can’t have all have been a trick, though! It wasn’t.” Again, more emotion than was comfortable, but let out all the same. “It _felt real._ ” Their throat burned. “Toothless wasn’t controlled the whole time. It’s _not possible._ ”

 

“You really loved it. The dragon.”

 

“I even fucking named ‘em, Astrid.” There was the biting tone, again. Fuck. “Toothless _protected_ me. Maybe it was a glitch but—” They had to cough around the lump trying to strangle them. “I truly thought that… that I’d gotten to ‘em. That I’d tamed ‘em.”

 

“Hiccup, talking about going about things backwards? You protected… Toothless—a _muttation,_ one of the things designed to kill us— and you protected it _from_ me. Me, someone else from District 7, and— and the one who you— well.”

 

Her blush was still one of the most adorable sights they’d ever seen. “You can say it. The one I had fallen in love with.” They leaned forward to kiss the gentle slope of her nasal bridge, brushing lips over the edges of her eyebrows. She hummed a happy whimper, her forehead scrunching up under their mouth before they pulled away.

 

 _But what’s the point of all this?_ Astrid clearly had something she wanted to say and was taking the long way ‘round to get there, and it was nerve-wracking not knowing where she was trying to go.

 

She exhaled hard through her nose, an internal struggle apparently resolved, judging by the brightening and hardening of her eyes. “Yeah, ok, but… there was no guarantee that either of us, Toothless, _or_ me, were going to be safe for you, or good for you. But you somehow trusted both of us. I still don’t get that. I don’t get you.” Her expression softened into something really embarrassingly sappy as she reached to smooth hair behind their ear, their stomach flipping in response. “The way you saw, and hoped.”

 

They winced. “But I really fucked up. I should never have trusted a muttation like that.” 

 

“Trusting me wasn’t necessarily the wisest decision either.”

 

“It was worth it.” _A thousand times over._

 

“We barely escaped with our lives.” Astrid rubbed a hand over her right cheek, drawing their eyes to the wash of shiny raised scars, a toasted dusty brick fading against the amber glowing through her light skin. 

 

As beautiful as she still was— _just as gorgeous as she’s always been—_ she would never have suffered this much except for Hiccup.

 

“Astrid, we only survived because of you. I didn’t have any expectation of getting out of there except in a body bag until you came along.”

 

“Yeah, but it’s because of that stunt you pulled, offering yourself for the dragon that I—“ She closed her eyes in pain. “I only noticed you, like really noticed you, because of that. Because you… stopped me. You stopped me from further killing.” She swallowed. “If you hadn’t done that, I might have died fighting the Careers. Or, worse, survived to beat them. And I would have been just another regular Victor… and… I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself.” Opening her eyes to stare right into them, “And the fact that, in the end, I don’t know what would have happened to you? I hate myself for that.”

 

The implied meaning sent a jolt knocking through them, knocking words loose into a stream. “You’d be fine, really! You’d be fine, and safe, probably, and living back out with your parents, and, y’know, me, I would probably have fallen down a hole or something, or Toothless would have turned on me eventually, which I would have deserved, and you would have been _fine_. You would have been fine without me.”

 

“I wouldn’t, Hiccup. It’s hard enough already, with eight lives on my hands, but… I had you. To keep me from becoming—from changing into something even more horrible.” She’d started weeping, silent tears sliding across her face.

 

“No, no, no, dearest, no. Just, no,” rushing to cradle her cheeks in their hands, horror creeping up through their chest at the utter wrongness of seeing Astrid cry, of hearing all the most heated of the insults they’d ever aimed at her echo in their head. “Don’t cry, _jaanam_ , you were never— you were just trying to stay alive, that’s all anyone could do—“ They broke themself off to press into her mouth, kissing hard, as if that could transmit their meaning into her, force her to see what they saw, feel what they felt.

 

Her lips pursed underneath theirs, stiffening, so they drew back, mind racing. She sniffled, stony faced and miserable. 

 

_Another tack, then._

 

With a painful gulp, they decided to spit out what they’d been gnawing on for years. “You saved my life, y’know. You… you even sheltered me with your own body, Astrid, and I can’t ever repay you for that. And you can’t say that doesn’t make up for something, because it does. At least it proves that you’re better than me. I was the one who lost my leg because I was the dumbass stupid enough to play around with a muttation, and I put both of us in danger because of it.”

 

She sobbed in response, shoulders wrenching in. “That’s my point, though, Hiccup— you weren’t—“ she choked, grabbing at their shoulders, “you weren’t dumb to trust Toothless, you weren’t _wrong_. It was me who was too fucking paranoid—I couldn’t trust anyone, just killed people rather than look for a way out of that mess—“ Astrid broke down, almost retching in the violence of her crying. 

 

Heart twisted into their gut, they cuddled closer, wrapping limbs around her. There was nothing to do but wait, to try not to think about anything until she found her way back from whatever dark corners of the Arena branded in her, and to be there when she surfaced. 

 

Thankfully she didn’t cry for very long, the episode intense but short, ending in heaving sobs of air as she tried to catch her breath. The way her breasts vibrated against them as she shuddered was uncomfortably arousing, and they would have kicked themself in that moment if their foot wasn’t wrapped through her calves. As it was, with her curled against them, her breath catching in her throat, it was really tempting to take the selfish route rather than to let her take care of herself. 

 

With a final shaking breath she untangled herself from them, wiped her face and nose with her hands and arms, and grimaced at the slime on her palms. 

 

They leaned forward to kiss her anyway, breathing in the fragrance of sour sea air. Her lips quivered under theirs, but she remained soft and willing, kissing back in between her hiccups and shivers. Hiccup gave her a final kiss and then grabbed behind their back, searching for an edge of the sheet to help her clean up, and found one of their shirts, flung off long ago.

 

Bringing it up to her face, they dabbed at her cheek. “You ok?” 

 

Astrid took the shirt and wiped her hands in it before blowing her nose. “No, I don’t think so.”

 

“Astrid…” Hearing the finality in her statement was like falling into a crater, a sinkhole, a sandpit, a miry bog—

 

She raised an eyebrow. “I’m not ok. But I’ll survive.”

 

Exasperation and hope filled their chest and burst out, “Astrid, that’s all I want. I don’t give a fuck if you actually go along with these plans, if you even trust me, as long as I know that you’re going to be fighting. That you’re not going to give up. That’s all I’m asking.” Yeah, it ended more like a whine, but dammit if Astrid wasn’t the most obstinately slippery person sometimes. _I’m not asking much. I’m_ not. _Not really._

 

She closed her eyes, chuckling painfully. “You’ve changed your tune a little, but, ok. I get it.”

 

Taking the shirt from her, they patted her nose a little drier, swatting it a few times for good measure, happy to see her rolling her eyes at them like usual. “You still won’t say— you need to promise me that you’re going to actively try to survive, that you’re going to _hope._ ”

 

“How can I not, when you’re such a stubborn asshole?” Her sad laughter was more wondering than bitter. “Hiccup, only someone _this_ bizarre,” here she poked them in the sternum, “this _annoying_ , would persist in seeing the world this much upside down, would try to convince me that our certain death can certainly be avoided.” 

 

Hiccup didn’t know where to look or what to think. “I _think_ that’s a compliment?”

 

Somehow that stalled Astrid for a second, until she snorted gently, glancing to the side with dissatisfaction. She dragged them toward herself, gathering them against her breasts, speaking low against their neck. It was hard not to stiffen with some apprehension.

 

“Hiccup. Toothless is proof that you see possibilities that I don’t always see, whether or not things work out the way we want.”

 

“Yeah, really great, seeing new ways to fuck up, my specialty.”

 

“Listen to me.” She tightened her hold until they nodded against her shoulder. “Your plans… haven’t ever been that great. I’m saying that to be honest. But working together? I’d have your back.” Astrid pulled back enough to meet their eyes. “I have your back. No matter what, I’m going to be with you and I’m going to pay attention,” her expression shaded over for a second, “and I’m going to protect you. Whether from fellow Tributes or the fucking Capitol itself. Anyone who wants to hurt you or use you for their own purposes will have to get through me first.” There was no doubt that she meant every word. It was like looking into a furnace, or the sun. Her eyes fairly sparked.

 

Hiccup felt as hot as if that many kilojoules of energy had actually blasted them full in the face. “I— I’ll be the safest person in Panem.”

 

She laughed, this time definitely bitterly, and long. “No, the point is that you aren’t, you won’t be. But that’s why I need to stay with you.”

 

Comforting to know, dizzying to contemplate further, terrifying to examine too closely. The cleansing warmth they felt looking into her brilliant brown eyes, red from crying and droopy with exhaustion, smudged by gray clouds of rolling sea fog—that warmth crept through them until their toes were tingling. They shrugged away the growing embarrassment and awe. “I knew all you needed was a little fucking and you’d come around.”

 

Astrid snatched the shirt from between their fidgeting fingers and swatted their head with it. “You’re crude, and that was a bad pun.”

 

They ducked their head back against their shoulder, snickering. “A little more fucking and you’ll _come_ to like it more.”

 

“Fucking _stop_.” Her eyes sparkled with annoyance in the way they’d never not thrilled to see.

 

“Make me,” daring her, glancing at her from the side of their eye, looking down through their lashes at the way her lips parted and her whole body, lush and flushed and so near, crouched ready. 

 

But she’d only rolled them over and half dragged herself over them, nipping at their mouth in the most frustrating way for only a few minutes—and even still they’d not ever gone from half to full mast so quickly or intensely—when Astrid stopped, then sighed. Her breath blew sour, mingling through their panting. Their whole body ached in a fervent throb as she pulled away, drooping her head against their chin.

 

“Sorry. I’m… I’m tired. Not that I don’t want to— but I’m pro’ly gonna pass out on top of you in a few minutes if I keep on going.”

 

“It— it’s ok, Astrid,” Hiccup blew out what disappointment they could from their voice before trying to sound less like a spoiled brat. “You really— you should just go to sleep. I’ll—I can take care of myself and then make sure you get a good rest.” Trying to raise themself up from underneath her, they scraped out a “Lemme just take a quick trip to the bathroom.”

 

Sliding her head down to their chest, Astrid tightened an arm around their shoulders, pressing them down back into the bed as she murmured, “Stay here with me.”

 

“Here?”

 

“You don’t hafta go,” she said, lipping at their ear.

 

“But I need to take care of business first—“

 

“Wanna watch.” Her voice was sleepy but the undercurrent of urgency—

 

—suddenly they couldn’t breathe, frozen in place, but whether more from utter vulnerability or a mounting excitement it was hard to say. 

 

Her grip around them squeezed for a beat. “If you’re ok with it.” 

 

“I— I think I am?” Their mind was racing, considering. It seemed like such a huge risk, to show her, to uncover a little more, a lot more, and that was both electrifyingly hot and skating uncomfortably close to the fence of boundaries they’d put up before. The boundaries were still completely intact, boundaries she’d not once even approached—hadn’t even touched their ass until just a bit ago, surprisingly, _even though I explicitly said she could_ —and they knew, now, that they could trust her to take care of them, probably no matter what weird rules they set up for her. Astrid could be trusted.

 

And it wasn’t like Astrid was always taking initiative to ask them _for_ anything either. She’d been unaccountably shy about saying what she’d wanted. _No. She was very clear that it’s_ me _she wants, more than anything I can do for her._ The way she’d looked at them as she’d poked them in the side, the realization that she wanted them in the same way that they’d wanted her for years but had somehow still never dared to hope that she’d reciprocate, jolted through them again. They couldn’t keep in the gasp as the chill ran through every nerve they owned. 

 

Astrid’s arm tensed around them, then softened, sliding off, leaving them free. “Just—it’s ok. If you’re not comfortable, I can wait until you get back.”

 

That clinched it, smoothing down what sharp bits of resistance they’d had left. There was no way they were leaving her side, or putting on their prosthesis, or walking into a cold bathroom alone, not when they were at this point of near agony, not when she was right here, soft and sleepy and so safe, so fucking safe for them to be around. Hiccup turned onto their right side, away from her resigned sigh, and grinned as they backed into her, grabbing her arm and hoisting it over their shoulders and then tucking their ass against her belly. She shifted then, rolling like a wave of warmth as she adjusted herself closer to them, her soft breasts against their back and a thigh, warm and thick and heavy, coming to hang over their hips and drape against their legs. 

 

“You’re fine with me watching?” Her hand caressed down their chest, brushing against a nipple, sending a jerk through their hips.

 

“I’m too fine for you _not_ to watch.”

 

Astrid huffed loud in their ear, twisting her head up to crane over their shoulder, then rested the side of her chin against their collarbone. “Go fuck yourself, so I can get to sleep.”

 

“Your puns aren’t nearly as good as mine.”

 

“Beat it, you li’l fucker.”

 

Hiccup groaned, trying to hold back the laughter, delight burning through their chest, as they grabbed for the other long-torn-off shirt lying on the edge of the bed, bringing it closer to their hips, then eased their dick out from their briefs, a thrill passing from the contact and the knowledge that Astrid’s eyes were fixed on the way they ran a hand underneath their balls and fondled them. The space between her face and their hands charged with electricity, with expectation, with the weight of her stare on their prick as they fingered the head with their left. They were already so hard, and all she had to do was look and they felt like they were about to explode.

 

They slanted their hips forward to give her a better view, holding their breath as she gripped them tighter, her mouth hot against their clavicle as her body tensed against them, her leg pulling their hip back in resistance. God, the arc that she held their body in—Hiccup strained against her pull, unable to keep from pumping, just pumping away and shuddering, letting her see how they jerked against their own hand, their abdomen straining in time away from her and against themself as they arched their back into her bosom and their head up into the scars of her shoulder, and they were caught, strung tighter and tighter against her, pleasure building up in a painful rush and she had them about the shoulders and hips and wouldn’t let them go, safe and free, and they were going to come apart in her arms, they couldn’t move hands against themself fast enough, crying in want, and she was murmuring sweetly against them with words they couldn’t hear or understand—and Astrid was surrounding them, binding them to herself, she had their back and they could breathe in the scent of her hair as it fell across their mouth and for one instant it was clear. Astrid loved them back. That’s what she’d been trying to say. That’s what she’d been trying to prove. This whole time.

 

Their entire skin burst apart in blinding, dazzling color before wrapping tightly against their body again, desire pumping out through their hands into the pile of shirt and pleasure wracking them, emptying them, leaving them slack and loose and unwinding back into her. She slumped against them, the tension in her cut like a string, wet spreading from between her thighs to smear across the skin of their ass cheek where their underwear had been worked down.

 

“Can’t— Hiccup, you turd, you were right against my clit,” she snarled into their ear before letting her lips smash against their neck, teeth knocking into skin as she collapsed further around them.

 

“Wasn’t—“ Huffed, “not on— purpose.” Their tongue felt heavy in their mouth, an unexpected satisfaction blooming through their already satiated body. _Made her come again. Without even trying at all._ “Didn’t— know—“ They wiped their dick off into the sleep shirt, shuddering one final time, and tucked it back into their underwear, then hiked the briefs up around their hips again.

 

“Yeah, sure.” Astrid slid away, lying down next to Hiccup with her voice muffled in the mattress. She’d kept an arm around their chest, pulling them over onto their back.

 

“Serious.” 

 

“You’re saying that we fit that perfectly together.” Her tone was skeptical and heavy. They could see her out of the corner of their eye lifting her head and laying it down on a cheek, her unscarred half of her glorious face stuck with her hair darkening to deep brown against sweaty glowing skin. 

 

“I’m not saying that.” A deep lassitude settled into their limbs. They turned their head slightly, letting their eyes rest on her, soaking up more beauty, storing up more strength.

 

“Whu’ter you sayin’ then.” She’d closed her eyes.

 

“Wasn’t on purpose.” 

 

“Good.” It came out more like a grunt, and her arm relaxed over them. “Can’t ha’ you get weird ideas.”

 

“Ideas?”

 

“Fairness ’n shit.”

 

Hiccup tried to think of what she’d might mean. It was hard to focus though, sleep edging in around them, settling down on them with the same comfortable weight as Astrid’s hand around their chest, her bicep relaxing in small twitches of exhaustion in the bottom of their eyeline. 

 

They’d not realized their eyes had drooped until Astrid nudged them in the breastbone with her elbow. 

 

“Lights.”

 

They found their hands, which were clutching at her arm, and lifted them into the air, clapping once. The ceiling’s recessed lights went out, leaving the room in grays and darkness, mitigated only by the strips of weak sunlight coming through the window shades and landing ineffectually against the floor across the room. Their eyes felt heavier than ever, and they let them close.

 

They placed a hand back over her wrist and wrapped the other around her elbow. There was so much comfort in knowing that she was there.

 

There wasn’t a place on earth they’d rather be.

 

 


	6. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> urination mention

Astrid woke to near pitch blackness, Hiccup’s soft waves of hair in her face and a burning desire for the bathroom in her loins. 

 

She untangled herself as gently as she could from their limbs, which had somehow encroached all the way around her while she’d slept, and tottered as quickly as she could to the toilet, not bothering to turn on lights or close doors before doing her business. 

 

She was so thirsty, her lips parched and throat dry and head dizzy and heavy. Her urine had to be the deepest of yellows if she could bother to check. She finished and stood, washing her hands at the sink before sticking her mouth under the faucet and gulping down water as fast as she could, for as long as she could, then splashing her face, rubbing some of the crud of dried sweat off. Running wet hands back through the messy tendrils around her face, Astrid swooped them back and then quickly redid her bun without even a cursory finger comb. She found herself shivering, her stomach empty and tight and hungry and sloshing with water and her head still heavy with exhaustion.

 

The mirror reflected a dark blur of her pale nakedness, shocking her back from the daze of night and sleep. Part of this fatigue was afterglow. Her hip sockets twinged, remembering the sustained deep stretches and thrusts, and then her vulva ached with the memory of Hiccup’s mouth against her, the thought stirring up a gentle tremor in her cunt. She turned and stumbled back to bed, unwilling to be apart and alone in the dark. 

 

Her eyes were already adjusted to the dim room. Hiccup lay curled up on their side where she’d left them, their arms and legs extended limply out onto the bed. They twitched in their sleep, mouthing something through parted lips, then fell still again. Astrid gingerly crawled up to them, searching for the edge of the sheet as she went. The bed was a wreck, the mattress pad showing through from where the fitted sheet had been pulled off a corner and apparently the flat sheet nowhere to be found. No wait, here it was, behind her, rumpled and pushed toward the foot of the bed. 

 

Pulling it the rest of the way from underneath Hiccup’s legs without waking them wasn’t hard, but it required delicacy that she didn’t really have, not in the state she was in. She tugged once more, falling back onto her heels as it finally came free, letting her head flop back against her neck’s nape in a small celebration. 

 

That was when she saw it. 

 

There was a small blinking light, a very small and very intermittently blinking green light, in the corner of the ceiling.

 

She’d never seen it before, not in all her years in this room. 

 

As soon as she fixed eyes on it, it vanished into the darkness.

 

Astrid rubbed her eyes with a corner of the sheet, and blinked, and stared. It didn’t come back.

 

_Hiccup hadn’t gotten all the surveillance._

 

Somehow they’d not gotten all the surveillance, or something had been added or changed since they took it down that morning, or they’d both just been screwed from the very beginning. The Capitol probably knew everything already. _Everything._ The chasm of fear yawned before her, begging her to jump down into it and surrender, as her gut knocked against her sides.

 

Astrid got on her hands and knees and crawled over to the sleeping form, dragging the top sheet with her, then got to her side facing them. Hiccup snorted in their sleep, then rolled further onto their face. She spread the sheet in a billow of air and let it fall over both of them.

 

The chill that the air sent across her skin traveled into her heart, then hardened, like a slick of ice. She snuggled closer to Hiccup, taking their limp arm and letting it curl around her neck, nudging her foot through the nest of their legs, resting the top of her foot against the under curve of their knee, feeling their shortened calf flex delicately against her heel. The flat sheet was already trapping heat between them, soothing her shivers down from the chill of cold to merely the chill of nerves, the tremble of sated desire, the shake of growing and unyielding anger.

 

She closed her eyes and breathed in the smell of Hiccup, the smell of their conditioner reactivated from the moisture of sweat and sex.

 

Her stomach growled. She pressed a hand hard against her belly, willing it to quiet. She’d have to eat a lot in the morning, to gain energy for the meetings they’d have, for the press conferences that would soon start, for the last week she’d have before the Games. 

 

For the last week with Hiccup.

 

_Tomorrow. Tomorrow we start in earnest._

 

_No turning back._

 

 


End file.
